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144144Democracy Now! - Immigrant Rightsen-USDemocracy Now! - Immigrant RightsMass Graves of Immigrants Found in Texas, But State Says No Laws Were Brokenhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/7/16/mass_graves_of_immigrants_found_in
tag:democracynow.org,2015-07-16:en/story/ad4c4a NERMEEN SHAIKH : We turn now to Texas, where several cases of immigrant abuse have surfaced, both at the beginning of life and in death. The Texas Observer reports this week the state has been denying birth certificates to children born to undocumented parents. Despite the 14th Amendment&#8217;s guarantee of citizenship to everyone born in the United States, Texas officials have reportedly refused to provide birth certificates to children whose mothers lack U.S. visas. A group of mothers has filed a lawsuit against the practice.
Meanwhile, about 250 children held in a detention center for immigrants and asylum seekers were given an adult dose of a hepatitis A vaccine earlier this month. Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association told HuffPost Live what happened.
CRYSTAL WILLIAMS : They were given a double dose, just there, of the hepatitis A vaccine. Many of them very likely already had a hepatitis A vaccine just a couple of days before. The whole thing was inexplicable, but at the same time very emblematic of what has been going on there. Incidentally, several of the children did develop problems from the vaccinations. Whether it was from the hep A or not, we don&#8217;t know, because there were four to six vaccination given to each child. But there are a couple of children whose legs swelled so much that they were unable to walk. There was a child with severe vomiting and diarrhea. And the solution to this, as it was to everything, or is to almost everything in the facility, is drink more water. That&#8217;s the answer to everything: Drink more water.
AMY GOODMAN : And in the latest scandal, Texas has claimed there was no evidence of wrongdoing when the bodies of immigrants found miles inland from the Mexican border were placed in mass graves. The bodies were gathered from the desert surrounding a checkpoint in Falfurrias, Texas, in Brooks County. An investigation was launched after the mass graves were exposed last November in a documentary by The Weather Channel in partnership with Telemundo and The Investigative Fund. In this clip, reporter John Carlos Frey speaks with Dr. Krista Latham of the University of Indianapolis at one of the sites where scores of migrant bodies were buried.
LORI BAKER : They&#8217;re unmarked, they&#8217;re unidentifiable, and there&#8217;s no information on these individuals. We anticipate at least several hundred may still be buried within the cemetery.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : As I investigate why so many lost migrants are dying in Brooks County, I hear about forensic teams from Baylor and Indianapolis universities, who have spent the past two years exhuming migrant bodies.
KRISTA LATHAM : I just feel like everybody deserves to be mourned properly. They still have parents or siblings or spouses or children that are wondering what happened to them. So we&#8217;re doing this for the families.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : For years, the previous sheriff would give the bodies to a funeral home, that charged taxpayers over a thousand dollars per body, then buried them, anonymously, in a corner of this cemetery.
Can you describe what kinds of bags the individuals were buried in?
LORI BAKER : They&#8217;re biohazard bags, trash bags. One was—
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Just regular trash bags?
LORI BAKER : Trash bags. What we found last year, there were coffins that were right next to each other on all four sides, because there were so many people buried in that area. We took one of them down, and we found skulls in between the burials. And so, we just can&#8217;t leave any dirt unturned, or we might miss somebody.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Wait, you have coffin, coffin, coffin, and then, in between coffins, you have skulls.
LORI BAKER : Skull, sometimes.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : These are mass graves.
LORI BAKER : These are mass graves. They&#8217;re commingled. Every one is different.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : So you shouldn&#8217;t just dump a bag into a hole in the ground.
LORI BAKER : You know, would you want your son buried that way? Or your mom? Or your sister? Or your brother? I mean, this isn&#8217;t how you want someone you love to be buried.
AMY GOODMAN : For more, we&#8217;re joined by the reporter you just heard in this clip, his own investigation, revealing new evidence that indicates rampant violations of the law with these mass graves. John Carlos Frey is the documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist at The Nation Institute. His latest report &quot;Graves of Shame,&quot; follows up on his last-year report , &quot;The Real Death Valley.&quot;
John, welcome back to Democracy Now!
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Explain to us where these mass graves came from. Who is buried in them?
JOHN CARLOS FREY : The mass graves are in a small rural county in South Texas called Brooks County, a very poor county. The migrants mostly come from Central America and Mexico, and they find themselves crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to evade a checkpoint and walking about 40 miles in what amounts to 100-degree heat and 100 percent humidity. Many of the individuals die. They don&#8217;t have identification on them. The process by which the county and officials in the area try to identify them is pretty meaningless. And these individuals are buried in a county cemetery, basically dumped into a hole in the ground. Many of them don&#8217;t have markers or proper burial techniques. And these graves, in the last couple of years, have been exhumed so that the individuals can be identified, or at least the attempt to identify them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, John, who do you believe should be held accountable for this?
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Well, the county is responsible. Anybody who is found deceased in the county, there is a procedure by which individuals who handle the remains have to try the best that they possibly can to try and identify the individuals. For example, county coroners are supposed to take DNA evidence and submit that to our missing persons and unidentified database. Individuals are supposed to have any sort of identification in the actual container where the individual is buried. The cemetery is supposed to have a plot plan. If you&#8217;re looking for the remains of a particular individual, you&#8217;re supposed to be able to find exactly where they&#8217;ve been buried. And it goes on down the list, from law enforcement to county officials to private mortuary companies. Any individual who has contact with the remains are culpable here. And all of those people that I just named and the organizations I just named have been negligent.
AMY GOODMAN : John Carlos Frey, you report hundreds of migrants have died in the sweltering Texas brush, some while waiting hours for Border Patrol to respond to their 911 calls. Your documentary features Sigfredo Palomo. He and his brother, José Fernando Palomo, came to the U.S. hoping to escape violence in El Salvador. But after they crossed the border, Fernando fell ill, and the two were abandoned by their guide. In this clip, Sigfredo describes how he had called 911 repeatedly as his brother Fernando lay dying.
SIGFREDO PALOMO : [translated] And then he started to hallucinate. His body, or his limbs, were no longer functioning. He didn&#8217;t recognize me, and that just killed me.
I called into 911 last night, so that you could report me to Border Patrol.
911 DISPATCHER : [translated] And they haven&#8217;t found you?
SIGFREDO PALOMO : [translated] No. And my little brother just died on me.
911 DISPATCHER : [translated] I&#8217;m so sorry. One moment please. And it&#8217;s just you and your brother, right?
SIGFREDO PALOMO : [translated] Yes, but he just died on me.
911 DISPATCHER : [translated] What is your brother&#8217;s name?
SIGFREDO PALOMO : [translated] José Fernando Hernández Palomo. He was 22 years old.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : This is Sigfredo moments after he&#8217;s rescued. It&#8217;s been 11 hours since he first called 911 and over three hours since dispatch got accurate coordinates. The Border Patrol never shows. It&#8217;s local police who come—in order to retrieve his brother&#8217;s body.
SIGFREDO PALOMO : [translated] They were the ones who literally told me, &quot;Your brother will go to a funeral home in Laredo, Texas. And you will be deported.&quot; Those were their exact words.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s an excerpt from The Real Death Valley by our guest, John Carlos Frey, the documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist. Tell us—continue to take us on this road. And talk about DNA evidence, what the state authorities are doing, what you feel needs to be done, as the controversy today is all about Donald Trump calling Mexicans &quot;rapists,&quot; John Carlos.
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Yeah, the individuals that I have found, especially in this particular area, are not rapists. Most of the people coming to this region here are asylum seekers. They&#8217;re fleeing horrible violence and economic depression in their own countries, mostly from Central America. And they&#8217;re coming to the United States to present themselves—to seek asylum, which is perfectly legal in the United States. It&#8217;s the way that we manage asylum seekers. We ask them to come to the U.S.-Mexico border and to make a claim of asylum. And that&#8217;s exactly what happened in this particular case.
Some people find themselves lost in this vast ranchland area, and the elements are just inhospitable, and many individuals die. And even in death, the individuals, their remains are improperly prepared and buried. As you just mentioned the case of DNA , all unidentified individuals in the state of Texas, by law, are supposed to have a DNA biopsy. Even if we don&#8217;t know who these individuals are, maybe sometime in the future they will be able to be cross-referenced with family DNA samples. On down the list, the way that the bodies were prepared, the way the bodies were buried, and now that they&#8217;ve been exhumed, we have found out that the bodies were improperly taken care of.
The Texas Rangers, who are the preeminent and elite group in the state of Texas who do investigations, were tasked with investigating why there were mass graves in Brooks County. They found no criminal wrongdoing. It&#8217;s exactly why I picked up the investigation myself. I found over a dozen violations of Texas and national law with respect to the way that the remains were buried. The culpability here is all the way from county supervisors all the way up to government officials, even Rick Perry, who was actually the governor at the time, who actually is pretty close friends with the private mortuary—I&#8217;m sorry, the private funeral company who was responsible for burying the bodies. The largest funeral services company in the country, Service Corporation International, was actually responsible for burying the bodies. And we found individuals buried four inches below the surface in shallow graves. We found people who were buried without containers. We found individuals who were buried without any identification information whatsoever, people buried in trash bags, in biohazard bags. We even uncovered an individual who was buried in a milk crate. So, these are all violations of law that I just listed, and the Texas Rangers themselves—excuse me—found no criminal wrongdoing whatsoever in this case.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, John Carlos Frey, you spoke to some of the people crossing the border in that area. Could you explain what they told you about the conditions they were fleeing and the risks they were willing to take, despite how dangerous it is attempting to cross into the United States along that border in Texas?
JOHN CARLOS FREY : Yes, exactly. I mean, and to the point of Donald Trump, these are not people coming from Central America or Mexico to rape American women. It&#8217;s the most ridiculous statement that I&#8217;ve ever heard. These are individuals who are fleeing extraordinary violence. If you know anything about Central America, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras—is suffering from great gang violence, cartel violence. People are not safe. Children cannot play out in the streets past 5:00. People lock themselves in their homes, and their windows are barred. Many individuals hire even private security to protect themselves. People are extorted on a regular basis in their jobs and in their businesses. And so, in order to make a living, in order to live safely, there&#8217;s no recourse. People are threatened with their lives on a regular basis. And many of the individuals I have spoken to who have fled those conditions come to the United States, obviously, seeking a better life. So, for a presidential candidate such as Donald Trump to denigrate—to denigrate the poor and the suffering, and to use them as a political platform for his own well-being is tantamount to cowardice. These are individuals who have no recourse. They wouldn&#8217;t leave their home countries, their cultures, their languages just to come to the United States to do harm. They&#8217;re really people who are suffering and in desperate need.
AMY GOODMAN : Sort of makes you think about what the pope would say, Pope Francis, who stood up for the poor and the suffering. John Carlos Frey, thanks so much for being with us, documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist at The Nation Institute. &quot;Graves of Shame&quot; is his latest piece .
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Greece. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: We turn now to Texas, where several cases of immigrant abuse have surfaced, both at the beginning of life and in death. The Texas Observer reports this week the state has been denying birth certificates to children born to undocumented parents. Despite the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to everyone born in the United States, Texas officials have reportedly refused to provide birth certificates to children whose mothers lack U.S. visas. A group of mothers has filed a lawsuit against the practice.

Meanwhile, about 250 children held in a detention center for immigrants and asylum seekers were given an adult dose of a hepatitis A vaccine earlier this month. Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association told HuffPost Live what happened.

CRYSTALWILLIAMS: They were given a double dose, just there, of the hepatitis A vaccine. Many of them very likely already had a hepatitis A vaccine just a couple of days before. The whole thing was inexplicable, but at the same time very emblematic of what has been going on there. Incidentally, several of the children did develop problems from the vaccinations. Whether it was from the hep A or not, we don’t know, because there were four to six vaccination given to each child. But there are a couple of children whose legs swelled so much that they were unable to walk. There was a child with severe vomiting and diarrhea. And the solution to this, as it was to everything, or is to almost everything in the facility, is drink more water. That’s the answer to everything: Drink more water.

AMYGOODMAN: And in the latest scandal, Texas has claimed there was no evidence of wrongdoing when the bodies of immigrants found miles inland from the Mexican border were placed in mass graves. The bodies were gathered from the desert surrounding a checkpoint in Falfurrias, Texas, in Brooks County. An investigation was launched after the mass graves were exposed last November in a documentary by The Weather Channel in partnership with Telemundo and The Investigative Fund. In this clip, reporter John Carlos Frey speaks with Dr. Krista Latham of the University of Indianapolis at one of the sites where scores of migrant bodies were buried.

LORIBAKER: They’re unmarked, they’re unidentifiable, and there’s no information on these individuals. We anticipate at least several hundred may still be buried within the cemetery.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: As I investigate why so many lost migrants are dying in Brooks County, I hear about forensic teams from Baylor and Indianapolis universities, who have spent the past two years exhuming migrant bodies.

KRISTALATHAM: I just feel like everybody deserves to be mourned properly. They still have parents or siblings or spouses or children that are wondering what happened to them. So we’re doing this for the families.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: For years, the previous sheriff would give the bodies to a funeral home, that charged taxpayers over a thousand dollars per body, then buried them, anonymously, in a corner of this cemetery.

Can you describe what kinds of bags the individuals were buried in?

LORIBAKER: They’re biohazard bags, trash bags. One was—

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Just regular trash bags?

LORIBAKER: Trash bags. What we found last year, there were coffins that were right next to each other on all four sides, because there were so many people buried in that area. We took one of them down, and we found skulls in between the burials. And so, we just can’t leave any dirt unturned, or we might miss somebody.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Wait, you have coffin, coffin, coffin, and then, in between coffins, you have skulls.

LORIBAKER: Skull, sometimes.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: These are mass graves.

LORIBAKER: These are mass graves. They’re commingled. Every one is different.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: So you shouldn’t just dump a bag into a hole in the ground.

LORIBAKER: You know, would you want your son buried that way? Or your mom? Or your sister? Or your brother? I mean, this isn’t how you want someone you love to be buried.

AMYGOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by the reporter you just heard in this clip, his own investigation, revealing new evidence that indicates rampant violations of the law with these mass graves. John Carlos Frey is the documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist at The Nation Institute. His latest report "Graves of Shame," follows up on his last-year report, "The Real Death Valley."

John, welcome back to Democracy Now!

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: Explain to us where these mass graves came from. Who is buried in them?

JOHNCARLOSFREY: The mass graves are in a small rural county in South Texas called Brooks County, a very poor county. The migrants mostly come from Central America and Mexico, and they find themselves crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to evade a checkpoint and walking about 40 miles in what amounts to 100-degree heat and 100 percent humidity. Many of the individuals die. They don’t have identification on them. The process by which the county and officials in the area try to identify them is pretty meaningless. And these individuals are buried in a county cemetery, basically dumped into a hole in the ground. Many of them don’t have markers or proper burial techniques. And these graves, in the last couple of years, have been exhumed so that the individuals can be identified, or at least the attempt to identify them.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, John, who do you believe should be held accountable for this?

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Well, the county is responsible. Anybody who is found deceased in the county, there is a procedure by which individuals who handle the remains have to try the best that they possibly can to try and identify the individuals. For example, county coroners are supposed to take DNA evidence and submit that to our missing persons and unidentified database. Individuals are supposed to have any sort of identification in the actual container where the individual is buried. The cemetery is supposed to have a plot plan. If you’re looking for the remains of a particular individual, you’re supposed to be able to find exactly where they’ve been buried. And it goes on down the list, from law enforcement to county officials to private mortuary companies. Any individual who has contact with the remains are culpable here. And all of those people that I just named and the organizations I just named have been negligent.

AMYGOODMAN: John Carlos Frey, you report hundreds of migrants have died in the sweltering Texas brush, some while waiting hours for Border Patrol to respond to their 911 calls. Your documentary features Sigfredo Palomo. He and his brother, José Fernando Palomo, came to the U.S. hoping to escape violence in El Salvador. But after they crossed the border, Fernando fell ill, and the two were abandoned by their guide. In this clip, Sigfredo describes how he had called 911 repeatedly as his brother Fernando lay dying.

SIGFREDOPALOMO: [translated] And then he started to hallucinate. His body, or his limbs, were no longer functioning. He didn’t recognize me, and that just killed me.

I called into 911 last night, so that you could report me to Border Patrol.

911 DISPATCHER: [translated] And they haven’t found you?

SIGFREDOPALOMO: [translated] No. And my little brother just died on me.

911 DISPATCHER: [translated] I’m so sorry. One moment please. And it’s just you and your brother, right?

JOHNCARLOSFREY: This is Sigfredo moments after he’s rescued. It’s been 11 hours since he first called 911 and over three hours since dispatch got accurate coordinates. The Border Patrol never shows. It’s local police who come—in order to retrieve his brother’s body.

SIGFREDOPALOMO: [translated] They were the ones who literally told me, "Your brother will go to a funeral home in Laredo, Texas. And you will be deported." Those were their exact words.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from The Real Death Valley by our guest, John Carlos Frey, the documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist. Tell us—continue to take us on this road. And talk about DNA evidence, what the state authorities are doing, what you feel needs to be done, as the controversy today is all about Donald Trump calling Mexicans "rapists," John Carlos.

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Yeah, the individuals that I have found, especially in this particular area, are not rapists. Most of the people coming to this region here are asylum seekers. They’re fleeing horrible violence and economic depression in their own countries, mostly from Central America. And they’re coming to the United States to present themselves—to seek asylum, which is perfectly legal in the United States. It’s the way that we manage asylum seekers. We ask them to come to the U.S.-Mexico border and to make a claim of asylum. And that’s exactly what happened in this particular case.

Some people find themselves lost in this vast ranchland area, and the elements are just inhospitable, and many individuals die. And even in death, the individuals, their remains are improperly prepared and buried. As you just mentioned the case of DNA, all unidentified individuals in the state of Texas, by law, are supposed to have a DNA biopsy. Even if we don’t know who these individuals are, maybe sometime in the future they will be able to be cross-referenced with family DNA samples. On down the list, the way that the bodies were prepared, the way the bodies were buried, and now that they’ve been exhumed, we have found out that the bodies were improperly taken care of.

The Texas Rangers, who are the preeminent and elite group in the state of Texas who do investigations, were tasked with investigating why there were mass graves in Brooks County. They found no criminal wrongdoing. It’s exactly why I picked up the investigation myself. I found over a dozen violations of Texas and national law with respect to the way that the remains were buried. The culpability here is all the way from county supervisors all the way up to government officials, even Rick Perry, who was actually the governor at the time, who actually is pretty close friends with the private mortuary—I’m sorry, the private funeral company who was responsible for burying the bodies. The largest funeral services company in the country, Service Corporation International, was actually responsible for burying the bodies. And we found individuals buried four inches below the surface in shallow graves. We found people who were buried without containers. We found individuals who were buried without any identification information whatsoever, people buried in trash bags, in biohazard bags. We even uncovered an individual who was buried in a milk crate. So, these are all violations of law that I just listed, and the Texas Rangers themselves—excuse me—found no criminal wrongdoing whatsoever in this case.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, John Carlos Frey, you spoke to some of the people crossing the border in that area. Could you explain what they told you about the conditions they were fleeing and the risks they were willing to take, despite how dangerous it is attempting to cross into the United States along that border in Texas?

JOHNCARLOSFREY: Yes, exactly. I mean, and to the point of Donald Trump, these are not people coming from Central America or Mexico to rape American women. It’s the most ridiculous statement that I’ve ever heard. These are individuals who are fleeing extraordinary violence. If you know anything about Central America, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras—is suffering from great gang violence, cartel violence. People are not safe. Children cannot play out in the streets past 5:00. People lock themselves in their homes, and their windows are barred. Many individuals hire even private security to protect themselves. People are extorted on a regular basis in their jobs and in their businesses. And so, in order to make a living, in order to live safely, there’s no recourse. People are threatened with their lives on a regular basis. And many of the individuals I have spoken to who have fled those conditions come to the United States, obviously, seeking a better life. So, for a presidential candidate such as Donald Trump to denigrate—to denigrate the poor and the suffering, and to use them as a political platform for his own well-being is tantamount to cowardice. These are individuals who have no recourse. They wouldn’t leave their home countries, their cultures, their languages just to come to the United States to do harm. They’re really people who are suffering and in desperate need.

AMYGOODMAN: Sort of makes you think about what the pope would say, Pope Francis, who stood up for the poor and the suffering. John Carlos Frey, thanks so much for being with us, documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist at The Nation Institute. "Graves of Shame" is his latest piece.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Greece. Stay with us.

]]>
Thu, 16 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400Immigrant Mothers in Detention Launch Second Hunger Strike Despite Retaliationhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/4/14/immigrant_mothers_in_detention_launch_second
tag:democracynow.org,2015-04-14:blog/e49dbf After five months in detention with her two-year-old son, Kenia Galeano joined a hunger strike with about other 70 mothers to push for their release. Today she described how she and several others were held in isolation as punishment.
“Inside this room it was really cold. It was dark. The toilet was right next to the bed. My son was in there with me this entire time,” Galeano said.
She also recalled threats that families would be separated if the strike continued.
“A guard told us if we didn’t eat we would not be equipped to take care of our children, and risked having them taken away,” Galeano said.
The women ended their strike on April 3 but now ten more have vowed to begin again Wednesday to refuse to eat except for one meal each evening. Like last time, they want bond hearings so they can be free while seeking asylum, as well as improved food and conditions at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, which is run by the private prison company, The Geo Group.
Galeano, who is from Honduras, was released on a $7,500 bond after the hunger strike ended. Her family paid $3,000 and the rest was supplemented by the Family Detention Bond Fund. But she said she can’t stop thinking about the hundreds of women she left behind, like her cellmate who had an eleven-year-old son.
“I saw how much her son really suffered in detention… He didn’t want to go to school, couldn’t sleep. He would hide under the covers,” Galeano said.
Her roommate is part of a category of detained mothers who have been refused bond because they were previously deported. Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz observed this pattern in March when she visited the immigration courts in San Antonio where women appeared via a video monitor from detention.
“It was an interesting Catch-22, because [the judge] would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that ‘you’re not eligible for relief.’ So, your child’s release is conditional on your release; you’re not getting out, therefore your child’s not getting out.” See more here.
On Tuesday immigration advocates delivered a petition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C. asking ICE Director Sarah Saldaña to lift the ban on bonds for women who have been deported before as part of their “deterrence strategy.”
The retaliation faced by the detained mothers echoes a pattern of pushback by ICE and prison authorities against their advocates on the outside. One of the sources for a March report by Democracy Now! on family detention has since been denied access to Karnes. A paralegal who wrote a critical essay about Karnes in The Texas Observer was also blocked from further visits.
Two incident reports provided to Democracy Now! show a group of Karnes detainees tried to draw the attention of a helicopter that flew overhead on April 2 by making large letters on signs that spelled out “libertad” which means liberty. Staff who documented the incident called it an &quot;insurrection.&quot;
On May 2 a nationwide protest is planned outside the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the other facility where hundreds of women and children have been detained since seeking asylum from violence in Central America. The event will kick-off a week of actions that end on Mother’s Day.
An organizer with the We Belong Together campaign frames family detention as an issue central to women’s struggle for equality.
“These women are blocked from achieving their full potential because of deeply flawed immigration policy,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado.
Click here to see Democracy Now!’s report on the South Texas Family Residential Center that includes an interview with a mother and her son who were held in isolation for a week. You can also watch the report in Spanish.
Our report noted nearby Crystal City, Texas, was home to a federal internment camp for Japanese and German men, as well as their wives and children, and a local newspaper has referred to the South Texas Family Residential Center as an internment camp despite objections by Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that operates it.
Advocates say the comparison of that facility to present day family detention centers in Texas could haunt President Obama.
&quot;He could go down in history not just as the deporter in chief,&quot; said Cristina Parker, with the group Grassroots Leadership, &quot;but as the president who presided over the return of modern day internment camps on U.S. soil.&quot;
After five months in detention with her two-year-old son, Kenia Galeano joined a hunger strike with about other 70 mothers to push for their release. Today she described how she and several others were held in isolation as punishment.

“Inside this room it was really cold. It was dark. The toilet was right next to the bed. My son was in there with me this entire time,” Galeano said.

She also recalled threats that families would be separated if the strike continued.

“A guard told us if we didn’t eat we would not be equipped to take care of our children, and risked having them taken away,” Galeano said.

The women ended their strike on April 3 but now ten more have vowed to begin again Wednesday to refuse to eat except for one meal each evening. Like last time, they want bond hearings so they can be free while seeking asylum, as well as improved food and conditions at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, which is run by the private prison company, The Geo Group.

Galeano, who is from Honduras, was released on a $7,500 bond after the hunger strike ended. Her family paid $3,000 and the rest was supplemented by the Family Detention Bond Fund. But she said she can’t stop thinking about the hundreds of women she left behind, like her cellmate who had an eleven-year-old son.

“I saw how much her son really suffered in detention… He didn’t want to go to school, couldn’t sleep. He would hide under the covers,” Galeano said.

Her roommate is part of a category of detained mothers who have been refused bond because they were previously deported. Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz observed this pattern in March when she visited the immigration courts in San Antonio where women appeared via a video monitor from detention.

“It was an interesting Catch-22, because [the judge] would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that ‘you’re not eligible for relief.’ So, your child’s release is conditional on your release; you’re not getting out, therefore your child’s not getting out.” See more here.

On Tuesday immigration advocates delivered a petition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C. asking ICE Director Sarah Saldaña to lift the ban on bonds for women who have been deported before as part of their “deterrence strategy.”

The retaliation faced by the detained mothers echoes a pattern of pushback by ICE and prison authorities against their advocates on the outside. One of the sources for a March report by Democracy Now! on family detention has since been denied access to Karnes. A paralegal who wrote a critical essay about Karnes in The Texas Observer was also blocked from further visits.

Two incident reports provided to Democracy Now! show a group of Karnes detainees tried to draw the attention of a helicopter that flew overhead on April 2 by making large letters on signs that spelled out “libertad” which means liberty. Staff who documented the incident called it an "insurrection."

On May 2 a nationwide protest is planned outside the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the other facility where hundreds of women and children have been detained since seeking asylum from violence in Central America. The event will kick-off a week of actions that end on Mother’s Day.

An organizer with the We Belong Together campaign frames family detention as an issue central to women’s struggle for equality.

“These women are blocked from achieving their full potential because of deeply flawed immigration policy,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado.

Our report noted nearby Crystal City, Texas, was home to a federal internment camp for Japanese and German men, as well as their wives and children, and a local newspaper has referred to the South Texas Family Residential Center as an internment camp despite objections by Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that operates it.

Advocates say the comparison of that facility to present day family detention centers in Texas could haunt President Obama.

"He could go down in history not just as the deporter in chief," said Cristina Parker, with the group Grassroots Leadership, "but as the president who presided over the return of modern day internment camps on U.S. soil."

]]>
Tue, 14 Apr 2015 20:50:00 -0400Immigrant Mothers in Detention Launch Second Hunger Strike Despite Retaliation After five months in detention with her two-year-old son, Kenia Galeano joined a hunger strike with about other 70 mothers to push for their release. Today she described how she and several others were held in isolation as punishment.
“Inside this room it was really cold. It was dark. The toilet was right next to the bed. My son was in there with me this entire time,” Galeano said.
She also recalled threats that families would be separated if the strike continued.
“A guard told us if we didn’t eat we would not be equipped to take care of our children, and risked having them taken away,” Galeano said.
The women ended their strike on April 3 but now ten more have vowed to begin again Wednesday to refuse to eat except for one meal each evening. Like last time, they want bond hearings so they can be free while seeking asylum, as well as improved food and conditions at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, which is run by the private prison company, The Geo Group.
Galeano, who is from Honduras, was released on a $7,500 bond after the hunger strike ended. Her family paid $3,000 and the rest was supplemented by the Family Detention Bond Fund. But she said she can’t stop thinking about the hundreds of women she left behind, like her cellmate who had an eleven-year-old son.
“I saw how much her son really suffered in detention… He didn’t want to go to school, couldn’t sleep. He would hide under the covers,” Galeano said.
Her roommate is part of a category of detained mothers who have been refused bond because they were previously deported. Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz observed this pattern in March when she visited the immigration courts in San Antonio where women appeared via a video monitor from detention.
“It was an interesting Catch-22, because [the judge] would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that ‘you’re not eligible for relief.’ So, your child’s release is conditional on your release; you’re not getting out, therefore your child’s not getting out.” See more here.
On Tuesday immigration advocates delivered a petition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C. asking ICE Director Sarah Saldaña to lift the ban on bonds for women who have been deported before as part of their “deterrence strategy.”
The retaliation faced by the detained mothers echoes a pattern of pushback by ICE and prison authorities against their advocates on the outside. One of the sources for a March report by Democracy Now! on family detention has since been denied access to Karnes. A paralegal who wrote a critical essay about Karnes in The Texas Observer was also blocked from further visits.
Two incident reports provided to Democracy Now! show a group of Karnes detainees tried to draw the attention of a helicopter that flew overhead on April 2 by making large letters on signs that spelled out “libertad” which means liberty. Staff who documented the incident called it an &quot;insurrection.&quot;
On May 2 a nationwide protest is planned outside the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the other facility where hundreds of women and children have been detained since seeking asylum from violence in Central America. The event will kick-off a week of actions that end on Mother’s Day.
An organizer with the We Belong Together campaign frames family detention as an issue central to women’s struggle for equality.
“These women are blocked from achieving their full potential because of deeply flawed immigration policy,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado.
Click here to see Democracy Now!’s report on the South Texas Family Residential Center that includes an interview with a mother and her son who were held in isolation for a week. You can also watch the report in Spanish.
Our report noted nearby Crystal City, Texas, was home to a federal internment camp for Japanese and German men, as well as their wives and children, and a local newspaper has referred to the South Texas Family Residential Center as an internment camp despite objections by Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that operates it.
Advocates say the comparison of that facility to present day family detention centers in Texas could haunt President Obama.
&quot;He could go down in history not just as the deporter in chief,&quot; said Cristina Parker, with the group Grassroots Leadership, &quot;but as the president who presided over the return of modern day internment camps on U.S. soil.&quot; nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsImmigrant Mothers in Detention Launch Second Hunger Strike Despite Retaliation After five months in detention with her two-year-old son, Kenia Galeano joined a hunger strike with about other 70 mothers to push for their release. Today she described how she and several others were held in isolation as punishment.
“Inside this room it was really cold. It was dark. The toilet was right next to the bed. My son was in there with me this entire time,” Galeano said.
She also recalled threats that families would be separated if the strike continued.
“A guard told us if we didn’t eat we would not be equipped to take care of our children, and risked having them taken away,” Galeano said.
The women ended their strike on April 3 but now ten more have vowed to begin again Wednesday to refuse to eat except for one meal each evening. Like last time, they want bond hearings so they can be free while seeking asylum, as well as improved food and conditions at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, which is run by the private prison company, The Geo Group.
Galeano, who is from Honduras, was released on a $7,500 bond after the hunger strike ended. Her family paid $3,000 and the rest was supplemented by the Family Detention Bond Fund. But she said she can’t stop thinking about the hundreds of women she left behind, like her cellmate who had an eleven-year-old son.
“I saw how much her son really suffered in detention… He didn’t want to go to school, couldn’t sleep. He would hide under the covers,” Galeano said.
Her roommate is part of a category of detained mothers who have been refused bond because they were previously deported. Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz observed this pattern in March when she visited the immigration courts in San Antonio where women appeared via a video monitor from detention.
“It was an interesting Catch-22, because [the judge] would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that ‘you’re not eligible for relief.’ So, your child’s release is conditional on your release; you’re not getting out, therefore your child’s not getting out.” See more here.
On Tuesday immigration advocates delivered a petition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C. asking ICE Director Sarah Saldaña to lift the ban on bonds for women who have been deported before as part of their “deterrence strategy.”
The retaliation faced by the detained mothers echoes a pattern of pushback by ICE and prison authorities against their advocates on the outside. One of the sources for a March report by Democracy Now! on family detention has since been denied access to Karnes. A paralegal who wrote a critical essay about Karnes in The Texas Observer was also blocked from further visits.
Two incident reports provided to Democracy Now! show a group of Karnes detainees tried to draw the attention of a helicopter that flew overhead on April 2 by making large letters on signs that spelled out “libertad” which means liberty. Staff who documented the incident called it an &quot;insurrection.&quot;
On May 2 a nationwide protest is planned outside the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the other facility where hundreds of women and children have been detained since seeking asylum from violence in Central America. The event will kick-off a week of actions that end on Mother’s Day.
An organizer with the We Belong Together campaign frames family detention as an issue central to women’s struggle for equality.
“These women are blocked from achieving their full potential because of deeply flawed immigration policy,” said Andrea Cristina Mercado.
Click here to see Democracy Now!’s report on the South Texas Family Residential Center that includes an interview with a mother and her son who were held in isolation for a week. You can also watch the report in Spanish.
Our report noted nearby Crystal City, Texas, was home to a federal internment camp for Japanese and German men, as well as their wives and children, and a local newspaper has referred to the South Texas Family Residential Center as an internment camp despite objections by Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that operates it.
Advocates say the comparison of that facility to present day family detention centers in Texas could haunt President Obama.
&quot;He could go down in history not just as the deporter in chief,&quot; said Cristina Parker, with the group Grassroots Leadership, &quot;but as the president who presided over the return of modern day internment camps on U.S. soil.&quot; nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsTSA's Airport "Behavior Detection Program" Found to Target Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terroristshttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/7/tsas_airport_behavior_detection_program_found
tag:democracynow.org,2015-04-07:en/story/80f6ea AARON MATÉ: Last month, the website The Intercept revealed it&#8217;s quite easy to be deemed a suspected terrorist at a U.S. airport. A leaked checklist used by the Transportation Security Administration shows an expansive list of suspicious signs for screening passengers. Yawning, fidgeting, whistling, throat clearing and staring at one&#8217;s feet—all of these, according to the TSA , are considered behaviors that indicate stress or deception.
Well, now The Intercept has revealed who the program actually targets: not terrorists, but undocumented immigrants. Taking a five-week period at a major U.S. airport, The Intercept found that 90 percent of all those arrested were detained for being in the country illegally. Not a single passenger was arrested for ties to terrorism. The overwhelming detention of undocumented immigrants bolsters criticism that government screening programs have targeted passengers with racial profiling.
AMY GOODMAN : I hesitate to clear my throat here, but they&#8217;ve also cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The checklist is part of the TSA&#8217;s controversial program known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT . It employs specially trained officers, known as behavior detection officers, to watch and interact with passengers going through screening. The TSA has trained and deployed thousands of these officers, spending more than $900 million on this program since its inception in 2007.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by the reporter who broke the story. Jana Winter is a reporter with The Intercept , her latest piece headlined &quot; TSA &#39;Behavior Detection&#39; Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists.&quot;
So, explain how, and welcome to Democracy Now!
JANA WINTER : Thanks for having me. Well, we looked at—to be clear, this is just a five-week period at one major international airport in 2007. We don&#8217;t know if this is still what&#8217;s going on, although all of my sources currently at TSA say it is. But if you look through what happened during this time period, so 429 times, a behavior detection officer interacted with a passenger they thought might be suspicious—meaning those same indicators on that checklist, like your luggage is heavier than it appears to be—which is me and everyone. So, then, out of that group, 47 were referred to law enforcement. Out of the 47, 16 were arrested in total. Fourteen were for being in the country illegally. And that&#8217;s about 3.75 percent of their entire work product for five weeks, resulted in an arrest. And they were for people being in the country illegally.
AARON MATÉ: How did racial profiling factor into these detentions, do you think?
JANA WINTER : Well, according to my sources within the program, or people who have worked in the program in the past, or any of the numerous oversight agencies that have been looking at this program for quite a while, the way that it was designed and the model it was based off of was related to what Customs and Border Protection was doing. This is how—this is a very effective way for finding drugs or people being smuggled across the border. You&#8217;re looking for fake IDs, you&#8217;re looking for fraudulent travel, you know, any kind of document. You can, according to my sources, look for these signs, like confusion, people who are wearing pretty similar identical outfits that are brand new, and luggage—all the signs that appear on the checklist for terrorism. But that&#8217;s not how you find terrorists. It&#8217;s just how you find undocumented people in the country. So, my sources say, from the very beginning, this was never going to find terrorists.
AMY GOODMAN : And so, what is the TSA saying about these documents? And are they saying that you are now arming the terrorists with the documents of how they seek them out?
JANA WINTER : I have no idea, because when I reach out to them for comment, I hear they have been skiing and unavailable for five weeks, or they do not respond. Last night, when I got into Penn Station at about 11:30, all of a sudden, the one TSA spokesman started favoriting all of my tweets on Twitter, and I was like, seriously? I&#8217;m still waiting for your comment. I asked, here&#8217;s what I have, specifically, do these numbers indicate current trends, nationwide trends? I have no idea what they&#8217;re saying. They have been defending this program that everyone else has said is based on complete junk science and has spent over a billion dollars, basically, doing the job of Customs and Border Protection, which is not the mission of the TSA .
AARON MATÉ: Well, can you talk about this, the TSA encroaching on the mandate of another agency and then possibly jeopardizing the rights of people who are undocumented, but not trying to cross a border, per se ?
JANA WINTER : Well, in some cases they are trying to cross a border, because once you go through an airport, you know, sort of screening point.
AARON MATÉ: OK, right, yeah.
JANA WINTER : But for the last six years, since its inception almost, the GAO , DHS Inspector General&#8217;s Office, various congressional committees have said, &quot;Looks like you&#8217;re targeting undocumented immigrants.&quot; But TSA has this thing where they classify everything as sensitive security information. It&#8217;s like their own invented classification. So they couldn&#8217;t release anything. In the GAO reports, you just see, like, redacted, redacted, TSA would not supply the documents. People have long been saying that this is what&#8217;s happening. We just now have numbers to show that, here it is, where are your terrorists?
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Jana Winter, we want to thank you very much for being with us, a reporter with The Intercept . Her latest piece is headlined &quot; TSA &#39;Behavior Detection&#39; Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists,&quot; and we&#8217;ll link to it at democracynow.org. AARON MATÉ: Last month, the website The Intercept revealed it’s quite easy to be deemed a suspected terrorist at a U.S. airport. A leaked checklist used by the Transportation Security Administration shows an expansive list of suspicious signs for screening passengers. Yawning, fidgeting, whistling, throat clearing and staring at one’s feet—all of these, according to the TSA, are considered behaviors that indicate stress or deception.

Well, now The Intercept has revealed who the program actually targets: not terrorists, but undocumented immigrants. Taking a five-week period at a major U.S. airport, The Intercept found that 90 percent of all those arrested were detained for being in the country illegally. Not a single passenger was arrested for ties to terrorism. The overwhelming detention of undocumented immigrants bolsters criticism that government screening programs have targeted passengers with racial profiling.

AMYGOODMAN: I hesitate to clear my throat here, but they’ve also cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The checklist is part of the TSA’s controversial program known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT. It employs specially trained officers, known as behavior detection officers, to watch and interact with passengers going through screening. The TSA has trained and deployed thousands of these officers, spending more than $900 million on this program since its inception in 2007.

For more, we’re joined by the reporter who broke the story. Jana Winter is a reporter with The Intercept, her latest piece headlined "TSA 'Behavior Detection' Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists."

So, explain how, and welcome to Democracy Now!

JANAWINTER: Thanks for having me. Well, we looked at—to be clear, this is just a five-week period at one major international airport in 2007. We don’t know if this is still what’s going on, although all of my sources currently at TSA say it is. But if you look through what happened during this time period, so 429 times, a behavior detection officer interacted with a passenger they thought might be suspicious—meaning those same indicators on that checklist, like your luggage is heavier than it appears to be—which is me and everyone. So, then, out of that group, 47 were referred to law enforcement. Out of the 47, 16 were arrested in total. Fourteen were for being in the country illegally. And that’s about 3.75 percent of their entire work product for five weeks, resulted in an arrest. And they were for people being in the country illegally.

AARON MATÉ: How did racial profiling factor into these detentions, do you think?

JANAWINTER: Well, according to my sources within the program, or people who have worked in the program in the past, or any of the numerous oversight agencies that have been looking at this program for quite a while, the way that it was designed and the model it was based off of was related to what Customs and Border Protection was doing. This is how—this is a very effective way for finding drugs or people being smuggled across the border. You’re looking for fake IDs, you’re looking for fraudulent travel, you know, any kind of document. You can, according to my sources, look for these signs, like confusion, people who are wearing pretty similar identical outfits that are brand new, and luggage—all the signs that appear on the checklist for terrorism. But that’s not how you find terrorists. It’s just how you find undocumented people in the country. So, my sources say, from the very beginning, this was never going to find terrorists.

AMYGOODMAN: And so, what is the TSA saying about these documents? And are they saying that you are now arming the terrorists with the documents of how they seek them out?

JANAWINTER: I have no idea, because when I reach out to them for comment, I hear they have been skiing and unavailable for five weeks, or they do not respond. Last night, when I got into Penn Station at about 11:30, all of a sudden, the one TSA spokesman started favoriting all of my tweets on Twitter, and I was like, seriously? I’m still waiting for your comment. I asked, here’s what I have, specifically, do these numbers indicate current trends, nationwide trends? I have no idea what they’re saying. They have been defending this program that everyone else has said is based on complete junk science and has spent over a billion dollars, basically, doing the job of Customs and Border Protection, which is not the mission of the TSA.

AARON MATÉ: Well, can you talk about this, the TSA encroaching on the mandate of another agency and then possibly jeopardizing the rights of people who are undocumented, but not trying to cross a border, per se?

JANAWINTER: Well, in some cases they are trying to cross a border, because once you go through an airport, you know, sort of screening point.

AARON MATÉ: OK, right, yeah.

JANAWINTER: But for the last six years, since its inception almost, the GAO, DHS Inspector General’s Office, various congressional committees have said, "Looks like you’re targeting undocumented immigrants." But TSA has this thing where they classify everything as sensitive security information. It’s like their own invented classification. So they couldn’t release anything. In the GAO reports, you just see, like, redacted, redacted, TSA would not supply the documents. People have long been saying that this is what’s happening. We just now have numbers to show that, here it is, where are your terrorists?

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Jana Winter, we want to thank you very much for being with us, a reporter with The Intercept. Her latest piece is headlined "TSA 'Behavior Detection' Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists," and we’ll link to it at democracynow.org.

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Tue, 07 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400Part 2: Migrant Women Appear Via Video from Detention Centers in Asylum Cases Amid Harsh Conditionshttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/25/part_2_migrant_women_appear_via
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-25:blog/19f81e Watch our extended interview about detained migrant women seeking asylum in court via video stream, as they face harsh conditions in a private prison setting along with children as young as a few months old. We speak with Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz about what she observed in the courtrooms in San Antonio, and with Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Watch Part 1 of this report which includes an on-the-ground video story from Texas and an interview with a mother and her son who were recently released on bond from detention.
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we&#8217;re continuing to look at President Obama&#8217;s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.
But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found that the Obama administration&#8217;s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming into the country was illegal.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re joined again by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Also with us, Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! producer, who has just returned from Texas, where she was reporting on family detention. And you can see her report in part one of this discussion.
Renée, I wanted to start with you. Can you describe your experience in the courtroom? What were these court cases about?
RENÉE FELTZ : Well, Amy, when I was in San Antonio reporting, I stopped by the federal immigration courts. They have rented out a floor in a commercial building in downtown San Antonio. There&#8217;s a hallway full of courtrooms, and I went into one to watch women appear remotely, by video stream, from detention centers that I went to. And in the courtroom, you had a judge, you had an interpreter, and you had a lawyer, in some cases, for the women, and then you had an ICE prosecutor for the government. And what I saw was women appearing before a judge and only hearing part of the trial, in which their life was being determined, interpreted for them. The part that was interpreted was the judge&#8217;s questions directly to them, nothing else. So they didn&#8217;t hear his responses or what the lawyers were talking about, about how their case would unfold. The judge didn&#8217;t actually have a gavel. He had a remote control with which he would control what the women saw.
I saw the judge reduce a lot of the women&#8217;s bonds in these cases in which they were saying that they have credible fear and want to seek asylum, but do it outside of detention. He reduced their bonds from $7,500 to about $4,000 in several cases, especially the ones where the women had lawyers. If they didn&#8217;t, they were much worse off. But I also saw him deny bonds to women who had been deported before. And it was an interesting Catch-22, because he would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that &quot;you&#8217;re not eligible for relief.&quot; So, your child&#8217;s release is conditional on your release; you&#8217;re not getting out, therefore your child&#8217;s not getting out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But even a reduction of the bond to $4,000, when you&#8217;ve just come over the border with no belongings whatsoever, that must be a difficult hurdle for many of the asylum seekers to pass.
RENÉE FELTZ : It&#8217;s true. And a couple things about that. It isn&#8217;t always clear where the money&#8217;s coming from. Their families are desperate to get them out of detention and do what they can. In some cases, the women&#8217;s family can&#8217;t afford it. And there are some funds that have been set up that people are donating to that help them win relief. Now, one person I talked to—and I mentioned this in my video report—said that there were concerns that maybe the women were getting some help in paying their bonds from traffickers. And so, when they were released, they were perhaps going into sexual slavery. And this is a big concern, but I wasn&#8217;t able to confirm that, but I heard concerns raised.
AMY GOODMAN : Barbara Hines, can you weigh in here, as former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School? What&#8217;s happening in these courtrooms and the issues that Renée has raised?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. I mean, before the lawsuits, because ICE , the government, opposed every single bond, it was a tremendous drain on legal resources. There are not enough pro bono lawyers, in the first place, to represent this population, and we were forced to fight every single case. Since the decision by the federal court, ICE has been setting bonds, but not in an individualized way as the judge required. ICE will set bonds between $7,500 and $10,000, which is far higher than what the judges are setting, forcing us once again to go into court to seek the reduction of bonds. Many women cannot pay the bonds. They are high, and they certainly are high for this population of asylum seekers.
And fortunately, we have had, with the work of the Interfaith Committee, in San Antonio a fairly generous bond fund, where members of the community have contributed. And that&#8217;s been the way that we have successfully been able to release women. But all of this procedure prolongs the detention of women, and it prolongs the detention of small children. It&#8217;s very, very stressful for the children, and it&#8217;s very, very stressful for the women. And we hear terrible, terrible stories of what&#8217;s happening to the mothers and their children while they are waiting to see whether they&#8217;re going to be released.
In regards to women that have not been—that are not eligible for bond because they have been deported before, that&#8217;s a very complicated legal issue that I&#8217;m not going to address here, but it just shows how ill-thought this policy is, that you&#8217;re going to say your child can be released with a bond, but you can&#8217;t. It once again shows to me why family detention cannot work. There&#8217;s not a humane way that we can operate a family detention center or a family detention program.
AMY GOODMAN : Renée?
RENÉE FELTZ : I fully agree with Barbara, and I know there&#8217;s a lot of concerns being raised about this in Texas. And there is a protest coming up on May 2nd, the Saturday after May 1st, where people from around the country are going to be gathering in Dilley to address this and to talk about what they want the Obama administration to do instead of detaining the women and children.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, well, Barbara Hines, that&#8217;s what I wanted to ask you. Given the enormous resistance by the Congress to act on any kind of immigration reform, what would you hope that the Obama administration could do in the case of these families?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the Obama administration took the most extreme position in regards to these families, from a panoply of options of what to do with asylum seekers. Remember, these are asylum seekers. They have a right to apply and seek protection in our country. They cannot seek protection from their own country. They must appear and arrive at a border in our country to seek protection under the Refugee Convention. Before the incarceration of mothers and children, women could be released, with their children, to family members—almost all of the women coming have family members in the United States—with a notice to appear for their hearings, with alternative to detention reporting requirements, monitoring devices, going to holistic shelters, like Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. There&#8217;s a range of alternatives that are so much cheaper and so much more economical than the amount of money that the government is now spending—and paying, of course, to prison companies for profit to detain women. All of this money could be spent on providing lawyers to refugee women that are coming, because the statistics show that appearance rates and success on asylum cases is intimately twined and dependent on access to legal counsel.
AMY GOODMAN : And what is the legality, Barbara Hines, of the description Renée just gave us of the courtroom where the women can&#8217;t even understand half of what is going on and they&#8217;re looking at the judge with a remote control in the judge&#8217;s hand through this video screen from the detention facility?
BARBARA HINES : Well, this is very problematic. It&#8217;s sort of one more part of the dehumanizing process that immigrant women go through. You&#8217;re not a person in front of a judge. It is a grave concern of mine that we do not have complete, simultaneous interpretation. That&#8217;s an issue that we are bringing up with the administration, because full participation and due process doesn&#8217;t mean that you just hear what the judge says, because of course, as a lawyer, there is so much that goes on between the lawyer and the judge, so many cues that your client can pick up on, understand what&#8217;s going on. But that is not what occurs in our immigration courts.
AMY GOODMAN : And you talked about the horrendous situation of particular cases you know about when women are being detained. Can you describe—can you describe some of those?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. For example, as I—we had a baby whose mother was told she couldn&#8217;t let her baby crawl—that baby was between three and six months—because it was dangerous, so she had to carry the baby around for six months.
We&#8217;ve had severe problems with medical care. The first case, early on, that we had was a child that had brain cancer. And ICE and the facility knew that she had brain cancer. They refused to provide any medical care to her, nor did they release her. And the only reason that she was released was because of the tremendous pressure that was put on by her lawyer and by the community advocates in Austin and nationally to have her released. So lack of medical care is a very grave problem there.
Threats by the GEO staff, and that is that if your child doesn&#8217;t behave, something bad is going to happen with the judge. But really—
AMY GOODMAN : The GEO staff is the private prison facility.
BARBARA HINES : Excuse me, excuse me. GEO is the company that runs Karnes. The Corrections Corporation of America runs the other facility, Dilley.
But really, I think the most sort of egregious, depressing part is that this is a deprivation of freedom. And it&#8217;s very hard to explain to young children that they can&#8217;t leave. They can&#8217;t walk out the door. And the uncertainties—what is going to happen to us, when are we going to leave? And, of course, these are children and moms who have gone through untold horrors and seen and suffered so much trauma in their home countries, only to face this here in our country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Barbara Hines, we just have a couple more minutes, but the—even despite the judge&#8217;s order, there&#8217;s still an expansion of family detention going on in the country? And what&#8217;s the refugee flow been like in recent months?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the refugee flow is down, is quite down, other than the—even among the Central American mothers and children and the unaccompanied children, the children that come from Central America, primarily, without their parents. But immigration, overall, unauthorized migration is down to its lowest historical level. So, to kind of frame this as some mass migration crisis, I think, is wrong. Unfortunately, some of the expansion is fueled by the prison industry. They need to have these beds filled up. So I&#8217;m very concerned that there is going to be an expansion at Dilley.
AMY GOODMAN : In fact, Juan, you were talking about the historical significance of the area.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Crystal City obviously was where, in the 1960s, there was a huge resurgence of Raza Unida party, and the beginning of the birth of modern political power for Latinos in the United States happened in Crystal City, a major battle over voting rights back then by the Mexican community in that time.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we&#8217;re going to leave it there, and we thank you both for being with us. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, and thanks so much to Democracy Now! &#39;s very own Renée Feltz, who&#39;s just come back from Texas covering the detention facilities there. And thanks to Tish Stringer, as well. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Watch our extended interview about detained migrant women seeking asylum in court via video stream, as they face harsh conditions in a private prison setting along with children as young as a few months old. We speak with Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz about what she observed in the courtrooms in San Antonio, and with Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.

Watch Part 1 of this report which includes an on-the-ground video story from Texas and an interview with a mother and her son who were recently released on bond from detention.

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we’re continuing to look at President Obama’s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.

But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found that the Obama administration’s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming into the country was illegal.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re joined again by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.

Also with us, Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! producer, who has just returned from Texas, where she was reporting on family detention. And you can see her report in part one of this discussion.

Renée, I wanted to start with you. Can you describe your experience in the courtroom? What were these court cases about?

RENÉE FELTZ: Well, Amy, when I was in San Antonio reporting, I stopped by the federal immigration courts. They have rented out a floor in a commercial building in downtown San Antonio. There’s a hallway full of courtrooms, and I went into one to watch women appear remotely, by video stream, from detention centers that I went to. And in the courtroom, you had a judge, you had an interpreter, and you had a lawyer, in some cases, for the women, and then you had an ICE prosecutor for the government. And what I saw was women appearing before a judge and only hearing part of the trial, in which their life was being determined, interpreted for them. The part that was interpreted was the judge’s questions directly to them, nothing else. So they didn’t hear his responses or what the lawyers were talking about, about how their case would unfold. The judge didn’t actually have a gavel. He had a remote control with which he would control what the women saw.

I saw the judge reduce a lot of the women’s bonds in these cases in which they were saying that they have credible fear and want to seek asylum, but do it outside of detention. He reduced their bonds from $7,500 to about $4,000 in several cases, especially the ones where the women had lawyers. If they didn’t, they were much worse off. But I also saw him deny bonds to women who had been deported before. And it was an interesting Catch-22, because he would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that "you’re not eligible for relief." So, your child’s release is conditional on your release; you’re not getting out, therefore your child’s not getting out.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But even a reduction of the bond to $4,000, when you’ve just come over the border with no belongings whatsoever, that must be a difficult hurdle for many of the asylum seekers to pass.

RENÉE FELTZ: It’s true. And a couple things about that. It isn’t always clear where the money’s coming from. Their families are desperate to get them out of detention and do what they can. In some cases, the women’s family can’t afford it. And there are some funds that have been set up that people are donating to that help them win relief. Now, one person I talked to—and I mentioned this in my video report—said that there were concerns that maybe the women were getting some help in paying their bonds from traffickers. And so, when they were released, they were perhaps going into sexual slavery. And this is a big concern, but I wasn’t able to confirm that, but I heard concerns raised.

AMYGOODMAN: Barbara Hines, can you weigh in here, as former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School? What’s happening in these courtrooms and the issues that Renée has raised?

BARBARAHINES: Yes. I mean, before the lawsuits, because ICE, the government, opposed every single bond, it was a tremendous drain on legal resources. There are not enough pro bono lawyers, in the first place, to represent this population, and we were forced to fight every single case. Since the decision by the federal court, ICE has been setting bonds, but not in an individualized way as the judge required. ICE will set bonds between $7,500 and $10,000, which is far higher than what the judges are setting, forcing us once again to go into court to seek the reduction of bonds. Many women cannot pay the bonds. They are high, and they certainly are high for this population of asylum seekers.

And fortunately, we have had, with the work of the Interfaith Committee, in San Antonio a fairly generous bond fund, where members of the community have contributed. And that’s been the way that we have successfully been able to release women. But all of this procedure prolongs the detention of women, and it prolongs the detention of small children. It’s very, very stressful for the children, and it’s very, very stressful for the women. And we hear terrible, terrible stories of what’s happening to the mothers and their children while they are waiting to see whether they’re going to be released.

In regards to women that have not been—that are not eligible for bond because they have been deported before, that’s a very complicated legal issue that I’m not going to address here, but it just shows how ill-thought this policy is, that you’re going to say your child can be released with a bond, but you can’t. It once again shows to me why family detention cannot work. There’s not a humane way that we can operate a family detention center or a family detention program.

AMYGOODMAN: Renée?

RENÉE FELTZ: I fully agree with Barbara, and I know there’s a lot of concerns being raised about this in Texas. And there is a protest coming up on May 2nd, the Saturday after May 1st, where people from around the country are going to be gathering in Dilley to address this and to talk about what they want the Obama administration to do instead of detaining the women and children.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, well, Barbara Hines, that’s what I wanted to ask you. Given the enormous resistance by the Congress to act on any kind of immigration reform, what would you hope that the Obama administration could do in the case of these families?

BARBARAHINES: Well, the Obama administration took the most extreme position in regards to these families, from a panoply of options of what to do with asylum seekers. Remember, these are asylum seekers. They have a right to apply and seek protection in our country. They cannot seek protection from their own country. They must appear and arrive at a border in our country to seek protection under the Refugee Convention. Before the incarceration of mothers and children, women could be released, with their children, to family members—almost all of the women coming have family members in the United States—with a notice to appear for their hearings, with alternative to detention reporting requirements, monitoring devices, going to holistic shelters, like Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. There’s a range of alternatives that are so much cheaper and so much more economical than the amount of money that the government is now spending—and paying, of course, to prison companies for profit to detain women. All of this money could be spent on providing lawyers to refugee women that are coming, because the statistics show that appearance rates and success on asylum cases is intimately twined and dependent on access to legal counsel.

AMYGOODMAN: And what is the legality, Barbara Hines, of the description Renée just gave us of the courtroom where the women can’t even understand half of what is going on and they’re looking at the judge with a remote control in the judge’s hand through this video screen from the detention facility?

BARBARAHINES: Well, this is very problematic. It’s sort of one more part of the dehumanizing process that immigrant women go through. You’re not a person in front of a judge. It is a grave concern of mine that we do not have complete, simultaneous interpretation. That’s an issue that we are bringing up with the administration, because full participation and due process doesn’t mean that you just hear what the judge says, because of course, as a lawyer, there is so much that goes on between the lawyer and the judge, so many cues that your client can pick up on, understand what’s going on. But that is not what occurs in our immigration courts.

AMYGOODMAN: And you talked about the horrendous situation of particular cases you know about when women are being detained. Can you describe—can you describe some of those?

BARBARAHINES: Yes. For example, as I—we had a baby whose mother was told she couldn’t let her baby crawl—that baby was between three and six months—because it was dangerous, so she had to carry the baby around for six months.

We’ve had severe problems with medical care. The first case, early on, that we had was a child that had brain cancer. And ICE and the facility knew that she had brain cancer. They refused to provide any medical care to her, nor did they release her. And the only reason that she was released was because of the tremendous pressure that was put on by her lawyer and by the community advocates in Austin and nationally to have her released. So lack of medical care is a very grave problem there.

Threats by the GEO staff, and that is that if your child doesn’t behave, something bad is going to happen with the judge. But really—

AMYGOODMAN: The GEO staff is the private prison facility.

BARBARAHINES: Excuse me, excuse me. GEO is the company that runs Karnes. The Corrections Corporation of America runs the other facility, Dilley.

But really, I think the most sort of egregious, depressing part is that this is a deprivation of freedom. And it’s very hard to explain to young children that they can’t leave. They can’t walk out the door. And the uncertainties—what is going to happen to us, when are we going to leave? And, of course, these are children and moms who have gone through untold horrors and seen and suffered so much trauma in their home countries, only to face this here in our country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Barbara Hines, we just have a couple more minutes, but the—even despite the judge’s order, there’s still an expansion of family detention going on in the country? And what’s the refugee flow been like in recent months?

BARBARAHINES: Well, the refugee flow is down, is quite down, other than the—even among the Central American mothers and children and the unaccompanied children, the children that come from Central America, primarily, without their parents. But immigration, overall, unauthorized migration is down to its lowest historical level. So, to kind of frame this as some mass migration crisis, I think, is wrong. Unfortunately, some of the expansion is fueled by the prison industry. They need to have these beds filled up. So I’m very concerned that there is going to be an expansion at Dilley.

AMYGOODMAN: In fact, Juan, you were talking about the historical significance of the area.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Crystal City obviously was where, in the 1960s, there was a huge resurgence of Raza Unida party, and the beginning of the birth of modern political power for Latinos in the United States happened in Crystal City, a major battle over voting rights back then by the Mexican community in that time.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, and we thank you both for being with us. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, and thanks so much to Democracy Now!'s very own Renée Feltz, who's just come back from Texas covering the detention facilities there. And thanks to Tish Stringer, as well. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

]]>
Wed, 25 Mar 2015 16:20:00 -0400Part 2: Migrant Women Appear Via Video from Detention Centers in Asylum Cases Amid Harsh Conditions Watch our extended interview about detained migrant women seeking asylum in court via video stream, as they face harsh conditions in a private prison setting along with children as young as a few months old. We speak with Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz about what she observed in the courtrooms in San Antonio, and with Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Watch Part 1 of this report which includes an on-the-ground video story from Texas and an interview with a mother and her son who were recently released on bond from detention.
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we&#8217;re continuing to look at President Obama&#8217;s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.
But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found that the Obama administration&#8217;s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming into the country was illegal.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re joined again by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Also with us, Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! producer, who has just returned from Texas, where she was reporting on family detention. And you can see her report in part one of this discussion.
Renée, I wanted to start with you. Can you describe your experience in the courtroom? What were these court cases about?
RENÉE FELTZ : Well, Amy, when I was in San Antonio reporting, I stopped by the federal immigration courts. They have rented out a floor in a commercial building in downtown San Antonio. There&#8217;s a hallway full of courtrooms, and I went into one to watch women appear remotely, by video stream, from detention centers that I went to. And in the courtroom, you had a judge, you had an interpreter, and you had a lawyer, in some cases, for the women, and then you had an ICE prosecutor for the government. And what I saw was women appearing before a judge and only hearing part of the trial, in which their life was being determined, interpreted for them. The part that was interpreted was the judge&#8217;s questions directly to them, nothing else. So they didn&#8217;t hear his responses or what the lawyers were talking about, about how their case would unfold. The judge didn&#8217;t actually have a gavel. He had a remote control with which he would control what the women saw.
I saw the judge reduce a lot of the women&#8217;s bonds in these cases in which they were saying that they have credible fear and want to seek asylum, but do it outside of detention. He reduced their bonds from $7,500 to about $4,000 in several cases, especially the ones where the women had lawyers. If they didn&#8217;t, they were much worse off. But I also saw him deny bonds to women who had been deported before. And it was an interesting Catch-22, because he would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that &quot;you&#8217;re not eligible for relief.&quot; So, your child&#8217;s release is conditional on your release; you&#8217;re not getting out, therefore your child&#8217;s not getting out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But even a reduction of the bond to $4,000, when you&#8217;ve just come over the border with no belongings whatsoever, that must be a difficult hurdle for many of the asylum seekers to pass.
RENÉE FELTZ : It&#8217;s true. And a couple things about that. It isn&#8217;t always clear where the money&#8217;s coming from. Their families are desperate to get them out of detention and do what they can. In some cases, the women&#8217;s family can&#8217;t afford it. And there are some funds that have been set up that people are donating to that help them win relief. Now, one person I talked to—and I mentioned this in my video report—said that there were concerns that maybe the women were getting some help in paying their bonds from traffickers. And so, when they were released, they were perhaps going into sexual slavery. And this is a big concern, but I wasn&#8217;t able to confirm that, but I heard concerns raised.
AMY GOODMAN : Barbara Hines, can you weigh in here, as former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School? What&#8217;s happening in these courtrooms and the issues that Renée has raised?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. I mean, before the lawsuits, because ICE , the government, opposed every single bond, it was a tremendous drain on legal resources. There are not enough pro bono lawyers, in the first place, to represent this population, and we were forced to fight every single case. Since the decision by the federal court, ICE has been setting bonds, but not in an individualized way as the judge required. ICE will set bonds between $7,500 and $10,000, which is far higher than what the judges are setting, forcing us once again to go into court to seek the reduction of bonds. Many women cannot pay the bonds. They are high, and they certainly are high for this population of asylum seekers.
And fortunately, we have had, with the work of the Interfaith Committee, in San Antonio a fairly generous bond fund, where members of the community have contributed. And that&#8217;s been the way that we have successfully been able to release women. But all of this procedure prolongs the detention of women, and it prolongs the detention of small children. It&#8217;s very, very stressful for the children, and it&#8217;s very, very stressful for the women. And we hear terrible, terrible stories of what&#8217;s happening to the mothers and their children while they are waiting to see whether they&#8217;re going to be released.
In regards to women that have not been—that are not eligible for bond because they have been deported before, that&#8217;s a very complicated legal issue that I&#8217;m not going to address here, but it just shows how ill-thought this policy is, that you&#8217;re going to say your child can be released with a bond, but you can&#8217;t. It once again shows to me why family detention cannot work. There&#8217;s not a humane way that we can operate a family detention center or a family detention program.
AMY GOODMAN : Renée?
RENÉE FELTZ : I fully agree with Barbara, and I know there&#8217;s a lot of concerns being raised about this in Texas. And there is a protest coming up on May 2nd, the Saturday after May 1st, where people from around the country are going to be gathering in Dilley to address this and to talk about what they want the Obama administration to do instead of detaining the women and children.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, well, Barbara Hines, that&#8217;s what I wanted to ask you. Given the enormous resistance by the Congress to act on any kind of immigration reform, what would you hope that the Obama administration could do in the case of these families?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the Obama administration took the most extreme position in regards to these families, from a panoply of options of what to do with asylum seekers. Remember, these are asylum seekers. They have a right to apply and seek protection in our country. They cannot seek protection from their own country. They must appear and arrive at a border in our country to seek protection under the Refugee Convention. Before the incarceration of mothers and children, women could be released, with their children, to family members—almost all of the women coming have family members in the United States—with a notice to appear for their hearings, with alternative to detention reporting requirements, monitoring devices, going to holistic shelters, like Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. There&#8217;s a range of alternatives that are so much cheaper and so much more economical than the amount of money that the government is now spending—and paying, of course, to prison companies for profit to detain women. All of this money could be spent on providing lawyers to refugee women that are coming, because the statistics show that appearance rates and success on asylum cases is intimately twined and dependent on access to legal counsel.
AMY GOODMAN : And what is the legality, Barbara Hines, of the description Renée just gave us of the courtroom where the women can&#8217;t even understand half of what is going on and they&#8217;re looking at the judge with a remote control in the judge&#8217;s hand through this video screen from the detention facility?
BARBARA HINES : Well, this is very problematic. It&#8217;s sort of one more part of the dehumanizing process that immigrant women go through. You&#8217;re not a person in front of a judge. It is a grave concern of mine that we do not have complete, simultaneous interpretation. That&#8217;s an issue that we are bringing up with the administration, because full participation and due process doesn&#8217;t mean that you just hear what the judge says, because of course, as a lawyer, there is so much that goes on between the lawyer and the judge, so many cues that your client can pick up on, understand what&#8217;s going on. But that is not what occurs in our immigration courts.
AMY GOODMAN : And you talked about the horrendous situation of particular cases you know about when women are being detained. Can you describe—can you describe some of those?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. For example, as I—we had a baby whose mother was told she couldn&#8217;t let her baby crawl—that baby was between three and six months—because it was dangerous, so she had to carry the baby around for six months.
We&#8217;ve had severe problems with medical care. The first case, early on, that we had was a child that had brain cancer. And ICE and the facility knew that she had brain cancer. They refused to provide any medical care to her, nor did they release her. And the only reason that she was released was because of the tremendous pressure that was put on by her lawyer and by the community advocates in Austin and nationally to have her released. So lack of medical care is a very grave problem there.
Threats by the GEO staff, and that is that if your child doesn&#8217;t behave, something bad is going to happen with the judge. But really—
AMY GOODMAN : The GEO staff is the private prison facility.
BARBARA HINES : Excuse me, excuse me. GEO is the company that runs Karnes. The Corrections Corporation of America runs the other facility, Dilley.
But really, I think the most sort of egregious, depressing part is that this is a deprivation of freedom. And it&#8217;s very hard to explain to young children that they can&#8217;t leave. They can&#8217;t walk out the door. And the uncertainties—what is going to happen to us, when are we going to leave? And, of course, these are children and moms who have gone through untold horrors and seen and suffered so much trauma in their home countries, only to face this here in our country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Barbara Hines, we just have a couple more minutes, but the—even despite the judge&#8217;s order, there&#8217;s still an expansion of family detention going on in the country? And what&#8217;s the refugee flow been like in recent months?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the refugee flow is down, is quite down, other than the—even among the Central American mothers and children and the unaccompanied children, the children that come from Central America, primarily, without their parents. But immigration, overall, unauthorized migration is down to its lowest historical level. So, to kind of frame this as some mass migration crisis, I think, is wrong. Unfortunately, some of the expansion is fueled by the prison industry. They need to have these beds filled up. So I&#8217;m very concerned that there is going to be an expansion at Dilley.
AMY GOODMAN : In fact, Juan, you were talking about the historical significance of the area.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Crystal City obviously was where, in the 1960s, there was a huge resurgence of Raza Unida party, and the beginning of the birth of modern political power for Latinos in the United States happened in Crystal City, a major battle over voting rights back then by the Mexican community in that time.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we&#8217;re going to leave it there, and we thank you both for being with us. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, and thanks so much to Democracy Now! &#39;s very own Renée Feltz, who&#39;s just come back from Texas covering the detention facilities there. And thanks to Tish Stringer, as well. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsPart 2: Migrant Women Appear Via Video from Detention Centers in Asylum Cases Amid Harsh Conditions Watch our extended interview about detained migrant women seeking asylum in court via video stream, as they face harsh conditions in a private prison setting along with children as young as a few months old. We speak with Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz about what she observed in the courtrooms in San Antonio, and with Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Watch Part 1 of this report which includes an on-the-ground video story from Texas and an interview with a mother and her son who were recently released on bond from detention.
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we&#8217;re continuing to look at President Obama&#8217;s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.
But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found that the Obama administration&#8217;s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming into the country was illegal.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re joined again by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice.
Also with us, Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! producer, who has just returned from Texas, where she was reporting on family detention. And you can see her report in part one of this discussion.
Renée, I wanted to start with you. Can you describe your experience in the courtroom? What were these court cases about?
RENÉE FELTZ : Well, Amy, when I was in San Antonio reporting, I stopped by the federal immigration courts. They have rented out a floor in a commercial building in downtown San Antonio. There&#8217;s a hallway full of courtrooms, and I went into one to watch women appear remotely, by video stream, from detention centers that I went to. And in the courtroom, you had a judge, you had an interpreter, and you had a lawyer, in some cases, for the women, and then you had an ICE prosecutor for the government. And what I saw was women appearing before a judge and only hearing part of the trial, in which their life was being determined, interpreted for them. The part that was interpreted was the judge&#8217;s questions directly to them, nothing else. So they didn&#8217;t hear his responses or what the lawyers were talking about, about how their case would unfold. The judge didn&#8217;t actually have a gavel. He had a remote control with which he would control what the women saw.
I saw the judge reduce a lot of the women&#8217;s bonds in these cases in which they were saying that they have credible fear and want to seek asylum, but do it outside of detention. He reduced their bonds from $7,500 to about $4,000 in several cases, especially the ones where the women had lawyers. If they didn&#8217;t, they were much worse off. But I also saw him deny bonds to women who had been deported before. And it was an interesting Catch-22, because he would offer a bond to their child, but he would say that &quot;you&#8217;re not eligible for relief.&quot; So, your child&#8217;s release is conditional on your release; you&#8217;re not getting out, therefore your child&#8217;s not getting out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But even a reduction of the bond to $4,000, when you&#8217;ve just come over the border with no belongings whatsoever, that must be a difficult hurdle for many of the asylum seekers to pass.
RENÉE FELTZ : It&#8217;s true. And a couple things about that. It isn&#8217;t always clear where the money&#8217;s coming from. Their families are desperate to get them out of detention and do what they can. In some cases, the women&#8217;s family can&#8217;t afford it. And there are some funds that have been set up that people are donating to that help them win relief. Now, one person I talked to—and I mentioned this in my video report—said that there were concerns that maybe the women were getting some help in paying their bonds from traffickers. And so, when they were released, they were perhaps going into sexual slavery. And this is a big concern, but I wasn&#8217;t able to confirm that, but I heard concerns raised.
AMY GOODMAN : Barbara Hines, can you weigh in here, as former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School? What&#8217;s happening in these courtrooms and the issues that Renée has raised?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. I mean, before the lawsuits, because ICE , the government, opposed every single bond, it was a tremendous drain on legal resources. There are not enough pro bono lawyers, in the first place, to represent this population, and we were forced to fight every single case. Since the decision by the federal court, ICE has been setting bonds, but not in an individualized way as the judge required. ICE will set bonds between $7,500 and $10,000, which is far higher than what the judges are setting, forcing us once again to go into court to seek the reduction of bonds. Many women cannot pay the bonds. They are high, and they certainly are high for this population of asylum seekers.
And fortunately, we have had, with the work of the Interfaith Committee, in San Antonio a fairly generous bond fund, where members of the community have contributed. And that&#8217;s been the way that we have successfully been able to release women. But all of this procedure prolongs the detention of women, and it prolongs the detention of small children. It&#8217;s very, very stressful for the children, and it&#8217;s very, very stressful for the women. And we hear terrible, terrible stories of what&#8217;s happening to the mothers and their children while they are waiting to see whether they&#8217;re going to be released.
In regards to women that have not been—that are not eligible for bond because they have been deported before, that&#8217;s a very complicated legal issue that I&#8217;m not going to address here, but it just shows how ill-thought this policy is, that you&#8217;re going to say your child can be released with a bond, but you can&#8217;t. It once again shows to me why family detention cannot work. There&#8217;s not a humane way that we can operate a family detention center or a family detention program.
AMY GOODMAN : Renée?
RENÉE FELTZ : I fully agree with Barbara, and I know there&#8217;s a lot of concerns being raised about this in Texas. And there is a protest coming up on May 2nd, the Saturday after May 1st, where people from around the country are going to be gathering in Dilley to address this and to talk about what they want the Obama administration to do instead of detaining the women and children.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, well, Barbara Hines, that&#8217;s what I wanted to ask you. Given the enormous resistance by the Congress to act on any kind of immigration reform, what would you hope that the Obama administration could do in the case of these families?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the Obama administration took the most extreme position in regards to these families, from a panoply of options of what to do with asylum seekers. Remember, these are asylum seekers. They have a right to apply and seek protection in our country. They cannot seek protection from their own country. They must appear and arrive at a border in our country to seek protection under the Refugee Convention. Before the incarceration of mothers and children, women could be released, with their children, to family members—almost all of the women coming have family members in the United States—with a notice to appear for their hearings, with alternative to detention reporting requirements, monitoring devices, going to holistic shelters, like Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. There&#8217;s a range of alternatives that are so much cheaper and so much more economical than the amount of money that the government is now spending—and paying, of course, to prison companies for profit to detain women. All of this money could be spent on providing lawyers to refugee women that are coming, because the statistics show that appearance rates and success on asylum cases is intimately twined and dependent on access to legal counsel.
AMY GOODMAN : And what is the legality, Barbara Hines, of the description Renée just gave us of the courtroom where the women can&#8217;t even understand half of what is going on and they&#8217;re looking at the judge with a remote control in the judge&#8217;s hand through this video screen from the detention facility?
BARBARA HINES : Well, this is very problematic. It&#8217;s sort of one more part of the dehumanizing process that immigrant women go through. You&#8217;re not a person in front of a judge. It is a grave concern of mine that we do not have complete, simultaneous interpretation. That&#8217;s an issue that we are bringing up with the administration, because full participation and due process doesn&#8217;t mean that you just hear what the judge says, because of course, as a lawyer, there is so much that goes on between the lawyer and the judge, so many cues that your client can pick up on, understand what&#8217;s going on. But that is not what occurs in our immigration courts.
AMY GOODMAN : And you talked about the horrendous situation of particular cases you know about when women are being detained. Can you describe—can you describe some of those?
BARBARA HINES : Yes. For example, as I—we had a baby whose mother was told she couldn&#8217;t let her baby crawl—that baby was between three and six months—because it was dangerous, so she had to carry the baby around for six months.
We&#8217;ve had severe problems with medical care. The first case, early on, that we had was a child that had brain cancer. And ICE and the facility knew that she had brain cancer. They refused to provide any medical care to her, nor did they release her. And the only reason that she was released was because of the tremendous pressure that was put on by her lawyer and by the community advocates in Austin and nationally to have her released. So lack of medical care is a very grave problem there.
Threats by the GEO staff, and that is that if your child doesn&#8217;t behave, something bad is going to happen with the judge. But really—
AMY GOODMAN : The GEO staff is the private prison facility.
BARBARA HINES : Excuse me, excuse me. GEO is the company that runs Karnes. The Corrections Corporation of America runs the other facility, Dilley.
But really, I think the most sort of egregious, depressing part is that this is a deprivation of freedom. And it&#8217;s very hard to explain to young children that they can&#8217;t leave. They can&#8217;t walk out the door. And the uncertainties—what is going to happen to us, when are we going to leave? And, of course, these are children and moms who have gone through untold horrors and seen and suffered so much trauma in their home countries, only to face this here in our country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Barbara Hines, we just have a couple more minutes, but the—even despite the judge&#8217;s order, there&#8217;s still an expansion of family detention going on in the country? And what&#8217;s the refugee flow been like in recent months?
BARBARA HINES : Well, the refugee flow is down, is quite down, other than the—even among the Central American mothers and children and the unaccompanied children, the children that come from Central America, primarily, without their parents. But immigration, overall, unauthorized migration is down to its lowest historical level. So, to kind of frame this as some mass migration crisis, I think, is wrong. Unfortunately, some of the expansion is fueled by the prison industry. They need to have these beds filled up. So I&#8217;m very concerned that there is going to be an expansion at Dilley.
AMY GOODMAN : In fact, Juan, you were talking about the historical significance of the area.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Crystal City obviously was where, in the 1960s, there was a huge resurgence of Raza Unida party, and the beginning of the birth of modern political power for Latinos in the United States happened in Crystal City, a major battle over voting rights back then by the Mexican community in that time.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we&#8217;re going to leave it there, and we thank you both for being with us. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, and thanks so much to Democracy Now! &#39;s very own Renée Feltz, who&#39;s just come back from Texas covering the detention facilities there. And thanks to Tish Stringer, as well. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsPrivate Prisons for Immigrant Families Grow Despite Court Ruling Against "Detention as Deterrence"http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/25/private_prisons_for_immigrant_families_grow
tag:democracynow.org,2015-03-25:en/story/d9c3b7 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today&#8217;s show with an update on a story Democracy Now! has followed closely: President Obama&#8217;s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.
AMY GOODMAN : But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found the Obama administration&#8217;s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming was illegal. Since then, more families have been granted bond and released, while others who are unable to afford the bonds remain locked up. They&#8217;re held at one of two new family detention centers run by private prison companies in South Texas. Democracy Now! &#8217;s Renée Feltz went there to find out more. She filed this report.
RENÉE FELTZ : My first stop in Texas is a small town called Dilley. An hour north of the Mexican border, just off Interstate 35, is a family detention center that opened in December. It was built on the site of a former man camp for oil field workers. I meet a resident who lives nearby and offers to show me around.
DILLEY RESIDENT : Here we are at the South Texas Family Residential Center. Pretty far out of sight. And out of sight, out of mind.
RENÉE FELTZ : We drive around a 50-acre site now run by Corrections Corporation of America. It&#8217;s filled with hundreds of mud-colored trailers. Each one can house eight people, or about three families. Much of the site is surrounded by a high fence. But peeking through it, I can see rows of trailers stretching into the distance. In one area, the top of a playground rises above the fence, and I can hear children&#8217;s voices. Much of the site is still under construction. Two large tents look like they&#8217;ve just been finished, each one big enough for hundreds of beds. When the facility is done, it will be able to hold 2,400 women and children. I asked my contact what Dilley residents think of it all.
DILLEY RESIDENT : What I&#8217;ve heard the most is, &quot;Hey, they&#8217;re building a new detention facility over there. I&#8217;m going to ask them for a job.&quot; Or showing someone the headline in the local paper that came out the week that they announced this, and it said, &quot;Feds OK internment camp at Dilley.&quot; And the sub-headline was: &quot;Opportunities for job employment.&quot;
RENÉE FELTZ : In fact, this part of Texas is no stranger to the detention of families. In 1942, the nearby town of Crystal City was home to an internment camp for Japanese and German men, along with their wives and children.
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT : The filming of the Crystal City facility, which you are about to see, shows how men, women and children, detainees of World War II, lived, worked and played under traditional American standards of decent and humane treatment.
RENÉE FELTZ : Details from a 1946 government film about the Crystal City internment camp sound eerily similar to the present-day camp in Dilley about an hour away.
FILM NARRATOR : Originally, it was a migratory labor camp of approximately 100 housing units, utility and recreation buildings. To provide for a population of 3,600, we added more than 500 housing units. Plastic camp money was issued to them in accordance with the size and needs of the family. Here are some children at play under the direction of a detainee teacher.
RENÉE FELTZ : Most of the women and children interned in Crystal City were U.S. citizens. The government later apologized for their treatment. Today, the women and children detained in Dilley are immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But their detention has drawn similar scrutiny. In February, a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. Since then, many judges have granted them bonds between $4,000 and $10,000. If the women and children can pay, they are released to live with relatives while they seek legal status. But some detainees can&#8217;t afford their bonds, and others are ineligible if they&#8217;ve been deported before. Still, while I&#8217;m at Dilley, I do see a group of newly freed detainees being loaded into a small white bus. One of my sources tells me they&#8217;ll be dropped off at the Greyhound bus station about an hour north in San Antonio. I decide to meet him there and find out.
And we&#8217;re here speaking with?
MOHAMMAD ABDOLLAHI : Mohammad Abdollahi. I&#8217;m with RAICES , the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. We work in collaboration with the Interfaith Welcome Coalition. And each night we&#8217;re here at the Greyhound bus station in downtown San Antonio, where we have vanfuls of women that are usually brought from either of the family detention centers. And usually what unfolds is the women come in the facilities, and it&#8217;s very surprising for us, in that the women are usually released from detention in the same clothing that they were probably caught in in the summer.
RENÉE FELTZ : As I talked to Mohammad, a van stops by and drops off a group of five mothers and eight children. They had been held at the other family detention center in Karnes City. Most will travel for days to live with an approved family member or friend. But they have no money or supplies, so the Interfaith Welcoming Committee brings them backpacks full of donated food, toys and diapers. Volunteer Rebecca Ortiz lists the ages of the newly freed people she&#8217;s met.
REBECCA ORTIZ : As young as 10 months, two weeks, usually three and four, seven, 10. Just recently we&#8217;ve seen some teenagers. They&#8217;re dropped off here at the bus station. And we&#8217;re here to help them, because we know that they don&#8217;t understand English. We&#8217;re here to help translate their tickets, show them how to read the tickets, explain the journey. Sometimes we&#8217;ll have a map of the United States, because they have no idea that they&#8217;re in Texas, or they know they&#8217;re in Texas, but they don&#8217;t know how far it&#8217;s going to be when they travel to California or Florida or Massachusetts or New York, Montana, Wyoming. So we have the map, and we show them, &quot;You&#8217;re here, and you&#8217;re going to travel through here, you know, until you reach your destination.&quot; And we may not have control over things our government does. We have no control over what a foreign government does. But when someone is standing in front of you, who needs help, we&#8217;re ready.
RENÉE FELTZ : As families wait to board their buses, I watch a volunteer give the kids stuffed animals she pulls from her purse. She&#8217;s been helping the women when they were detainees to connect with lawyers. She tells me about the ID cards issued to them inside.
JOHANA DE LEON : This is the ID for one of our clients that we had, Patricia—oh, I don&#8217;t want to say her name, but just Patricia. We represented her in a pro bono capacity. We helped her with her bond representation. She was there for three months, and after three months she got a $5,000 bond, that also, with the help of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, we were able to raise money and pay that bond on behalf of her.
RENÉE FELTZ : So, you&#8217;re holding a card that belongs to Patricia. Can you describe what this is?
JOHANA DE LEON : Yes, this is the ID the women and the kids in detention have. Each woman and kid get assigned a card that—they can be used for buying food at the commissary. Also, they must show it to the guards when they get count, which is three times a day. And also, if the kids want to take out a toy from the room area, they have to leave their IDs, just in case they lose the toy.
RENÉE FELTZ : Most of the women I meet at the bus station are too tired and nervous to talk to me on camera just after their release. But the next day, one of them agrees to share her experience of being detained.
[speaking Spanish]
RENÉE FELTZ : Erika and her 17-year-old son, Christian, agree to do an interview at the shelter for newly freed immigrants where they spent the night.
ERIKA RODRIGUEZ : [translated] My name is Erika Rodriguez. I left El Salvador on January 13th, crossed the river on January 27. The 27th, I was in McAllen. Once there, the immigration agent took us into custody and drove us to what we call the ice box. We were there almost three days and then taken to a place called the doghouse, a warehouse with chain-link fence cages. After two days, they brought us to the detention center in Karnes City, where we had a medical checkup and they gave us food. They gave us five changes of clothes and a blanket. They told us we were going to remain as a family in our rooms, but then we were separated from our children, and my son was put with other teenagers. Only children under eight years old could remain with adults in our rooms.
CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ : [translated] My name is Christian Rodriguez. I am 17 years old. Sometimes I complain about the week that they locked me up in medical isolation, because it was very ugly to be there, because I could not go anywhere. I was sitting there by the window watching the nurses pass by.
ERIKA RODRIGUEZ : [translated] They just told us to gather all our stuff and go to the nursery. And once there, we were locked in a room for five days. We did not see daylight, dusk, anything, because it was all locked. After five days, five officers came, but they did not give us a reason. In the week of punishment, my son lost five pounds because he was not eating. They gave him three meals, but he was eating once a day at most.
RENÉE FELTZ : Why didn&#8217;t he want to eat?
CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ : [translated] Because I felt very sad to be there locked up. Because I had no friends, could not see anything. It was the same every day, and I had no desire to eat.
ERIKA RODRIGUEZ : [translated] Thank God I was there not more than a month and eight days. But it seems like it was for my entire life. It is something that has really left a mark in me.
RENÉE FELTZ : After I speak with Erika and her son, I meet Rosalinda Maldonado. She helps run the shelter that housed them the night before.
ROSALINDA MALDONADO : It&#8217;s inhumane what we&#8217;re doing with these families, you know. They are being terrorized.
RENÉE FELTZ : Rosalinda tries to stay in touch with the women who pass through the house after being released from detention. She worries that some had their bonds paid for by traffickers. But she says even those who are reunited with family face trauma from their detention ordeal.
ROSALINDA MALDONADO : I feel like when they&#8217;re telling me they were put in these cells, or they tell me they&#8217;re going to take my children away, being the person who they are releasing all the pain, I start telling them, &quot;Forgive my country,&quot; even though this is not my country. I&#8217;m Mexican. I&#8217;m undocumented. But I say I&#8217;ll forgive my country, you know, because this is a new step for you.
RENÉE FELTZ : In San Antonio, I&#8217;m Renée Feltz for Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN : That report by Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz, who joins us now. Renée, your thoughts as you were in Texas doing this story?
RENÉE FELTZ : Amy, it was striking to see how young the children were coming out of detention, just babies in their mothers&#8217; arms. And while I was down there, reportedly one woman in detention tried to commit suicide.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we&#8217;re also joined by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice. Explain that lawsuit, Barbara.
BARBARA HINES : Well, that lawsuit was a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Texas Immigration Clinic and a private law firm to challenge the practice of holding mothers and children to send a deterrence message to other families, arguing that these mothers and children were a national security risk, picking the most vulnerable group of immigrants coming to the United States, really asylum seekers, women and children fleeing the most horrific violence, and saying that that group had to be locked up in private prisons that are run on the profit motive.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about this issue of some people saying that these are not asylum seekers, but actually just undocumented immigrants.
BARBARA HINES : Well, that&#8217;s actually not true in our experience. The vast majority of the women and children that have been held at all of the detention facilities that have been ramped up since June are asylum seekers. They have passed the initial screening, which is called the credible fear interview, to show that they meet the threshold standard for asylum. And under our international law and our domestic law, they have the right to apply for asylum to seek protection in this country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are some of the conditions that they&#8217;re being held under that you mentioned in your submission?
BARBARA HINES : Well, you know, first of all, these are run by—the facility in Karnes is run by the GEO Group. The facility in Dilley is run by the Corrections Corporation of America. The Corrections Corporation of America is same facility that ran Hutto, the last iteration of family detention that I actually did litigate, where children were held in—babies in prison uniforms, and these corporations thought that was acceptable.
The women and the children have no control over their lives. Everything is regimented—what time they get up, what they eat. The food is very bad. The medical care is substandard. Guards, just like when we litigated at Hutto, as I said, which was the last version of family detention, women have told us that they have been threatened that if their children misbehave, they&#8217;ll be reported to the immigration judge, that it can negatively affect their case. Children who get out of line—and, of course, these are young children. How can you have children running around that don&#8217;t stay in line? We had a mother with a baby that was learning to crawl, and that baby was not allowed on the ground, because the guards at GEO said that that was unsafe. She was forced to carry a baby around, which, of course, has terrible developmental effects for a child who is trying to learn to crawl and walk.
AMY GOODMAN : Barbara Hines, we have to leave that here, but we&#8217;re going to do part two of the conversation and post at online at democracy.org, especially what happens in the courtroom, when the women see the judge through a video screen from prison. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at University of Texas Law School, and Renée Feltz, thanks so much. And thanks to Tish Stringer for her video. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with an update on a story Democracy Now! has followed closely: President Obama’s expansion of the controversial practice of detaining mothers and their children. Starting last summer, thousands of Central American women with kids as young as a few months old crossed into the United States seeking asylum. Even though many were later found to have a credible fear of violent persecution, they found themselves rounded up and put into detention, with little chance for freedom until they were deported.

AMYGOODMAN: But last month a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. He found the Obama administration’s policy of detaining them in order to deter others from coming was illegal. Since then, more families have been granted bond and released, while others who are unable to afford the bonds remain locked up. They’re held at one of two new family detention centers run by private prison companies in South Texas. Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz went there to find out more. She filed this report.

RENÉE FELTZ: My first stop in Texas is a small town called Dilley. An hour north of the Mexican border, just off Interstate 35, is a family detention center that opened in December. It was built on the site of a former man camp for oil field workers. I meet a resident who lives nearby and offers to show me around.

DILLEYRESIDENT: Here we are at the South Texas Family Residential Center. Pretty far out of sight. And out of sight, out of mind.

RENÉE FELTZ: We drive around a 50-acre site now run by Corrections Corporation of America. It’s filled with hundreds of mud-colored trailers. Each one can house eight people, or about three families. Much of the site is surrounded by a high fence. But peeking through it, I can see rows of trailers stretching into the distance. In one area, the top of a playground rises above the fence, and I can hear children’s voices. Much of the site is still under construction. Two large tents look like they’ve just been finished, each one big enough for hundreds of beds. When the facility is done, it will be able to hold 2,400 women and children. I asked my contact what Dilley residents think of it all.

DILLEYRESIDENT: What I’ve heard the most is, "Hey, they’re building a new detention facility over there. I’m going to ask them for a job." Or showing someone the headline in the local paper that came out the week that they announced this, and it said, "Feds OK internment camp at Dilley." And the sub-headline was: "Opportunities for job employment."

RENÉE FELTZ: In fact, this part of Texas is no stranger to the detention of families. In 1942, the nearby town of Crystal City was home to an internment camp for Japanese and German men, along with their wives and children.

PRESIDENTFRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: The filming of the Crystal City facility, which you are about to see, shows how men, women and children, detainees of World War II, lived, worked and played under traditional American standards of decent and humane treatment.

RENÉE FELTZ: Details from a 1946 government film about the Crystal City internment camp sound eerily similar to the present-day camp in Dilley about an hour away.

FILMNARRATOR: Originally, it was a migratory labor camp of approximately 100 housing units, utility and recreation buildings. To provide for a population of 3,600, we added more than 500 housing units. Plastic camp money was issued to them in accordance with the size and needs of the family. Here are some children at play under the direction of a detainee teacher.

RENÉE FELTZ: Most of the women and children interned in Crystal City were U.S. citizens. The government later apologized for their treatment. Today, the women and children detained in Dilley are immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But their detention has drawn similar scrutiny. In February, a federal judge ordered immigration authorities to begin releasing the women and children. Since then, many judges have granted them bonds between $4,000 and $10,000. If the women and children can pay, they are released to live with relatives while they seek legal status. But some detainees can’t afford their bonds, and others are ineligible if they’ve been deported before. Still, while I’m at Dilley, I do see a group of newly freed detainees being loaded into a small white bus. One of my sources tells me they’ll be dropped off at the Greyhound bus station about an hour north in San Antonio. I decide to meet him there and find out.

And we’re here speaking with?

MOHAMMADABDOLLAHI: Mohammad Abdollahi. I’m with RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. We work in collaboration with the Interfaith Welcome Coalition. And each night we’re here at the Greyhound bus station in downtown San Antonio, where we have vanfuls of women that are usually brought from either of the family detention centers. And usually what unfolds is the women come in the facilities, and it’s very surprising for us, in that the women are usually released from detention in the same clothing that they were probably caught in in the summer.

RENÉE FELTZ: As I talked to Mohammad, a van stops by and drops off a group of five mothers and eight children. They had been held at the other family detention center in Karnes City. Most will travel for days to live with an approved family member or friend. But they have no money or supplies, so the Interfaith Welcoming Committee brings them backpacks full of donated food, toys and diapers. Volunteer Rebecca Ortiz lists the ages of the newly freed people she’s met.

REBECCAORTIZ: As young as 10 months, two weeks, usually three and four, seven, 10. Just recently we’ve seen some teenagers. They’re dropped off here at the bus station. And we’re here to help them, because we know that they don’t understand English. We’re here to help translate their tickets, show them how to read the tickets, explain the journey. Sometimes we’ll have a map of the United States, because they have no idea that they’re in Texas, or they know they’re in Texas, but they don’t know how far it’s going to be when they travel to California or Florida or Massachusetts or New York, Montana, Wyoming. So we have the map, and we show them, "You’re here, and you’re going to travel through here, you know, until you reach your destination." And we may not have control over things our government does. We have no control over what a foreign government does. But when someone is standing in front of you, who needs help, we’re ready.

RENÉE FELTZ: As families wait to board their buses, I watch a volunteer give the kids stuffed animals she pulls from her purse. She’s been helping the women when they were detainees to connect with lawyers. She tells me about the ID cards issued to them inside.

JOHANA DE LEON: This is the ID for one of our clients that we had, Patricia—oh, I don’t want to say her name, but just Patricia. We represented her in a pro bono capacity. We helped her with her bond representation. She was there for three months, and after three months she got a $5,000 bond, that also, with the help of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, we were able to raise money and pay that bond on behalf of her.

RENÉE FELTZ: So, you’re holding a card that belongs to Patricia. Can you describe what this is?

JOHANA DE LEON: Yes, this is the ID the women and the kids in detention have. Each woman and kid get assigned a card that—they can be used for buying food at the commissary. Also, they must show it to the guards when they get count, which is three times a day. And also, if the kids want to take out a toy from the room area, they have to leave their IDs, just in case they lose the toy.

RENÉE FELTZ: Most of the women I meet at the bus station are too tired and nervous to talk to me on camera just after their release. But the next day, one of them agrees to share her experience of being detained.

[speaking Spanish]

RENÉE FELTZ: Erika and her 17-year-old son, Christian, agree to do an interview at the shelter for newly freed immigrants where they spent the night.

ERIKARODRIGUEZ: [translated] My name is Erika Rodriguez. I left El Salvador on January 13th, crossed the river on January 27. The 27th, I was in McAllen. Once there, the immigration agent took us into custody and drove us to what we call the ice box. We were there almost three days and then taken to a place called the doghouse, a warehouse with chain-link fence cages. After two days, they brought us to the detention center in Karnes City, where we had a medical checkup and they gave us food. They gave us five changes of clothes and a blanket. They told us we were going to remain as a family in our rooms, but then we were separated from our children, and my son was put with other teenagers. Only children under eight years old could remain with adults in our rooms.

CHRISTIANRODRIGUEZ: [translated] My name is Christian Rodriguez. I am 17 years old. Sometimes I complain about the week that they locked me up in medical isolation, because it was very ugly to be there, because I could not go anywhere. I was sitting there by the window watching the nurses pass by.

ERIKARODRIGUEZ: [translated] They just told us to gather all our stuff and go to the nursery. And once there, we were locked in a room for five days. We did not see daylight, dusk, anything, because it was all locked. After five days, five officers came, but they did not give us a reason. In the week of punishment, my son lost five pounds because he was not eating. They gave him three meals, but he was eating once a day at most.

RENÉE FELTZ: Why didn’t he want to eat?

CHRISTIANRODRIGUEZ: [translated] Because I felt very sad to be there locked up. Because I had no friends, could not see anything. It was the same every day, and I had no desire to eat.

ERIKARODRIGUEZ: [translated] Thank God I was there not more than a month and eight days. But it seems like it was for my entire life. It is something that has really left a mark in me.

RENÉE FELTZ: After I speak with Erika and her son, I meet Rosalinda Maldonado. She helps run the shelter that housed them the night before.

ROSALINDAMALDONADO: It’s inhumane what we’re doing with these families, you know. They are being terrorized.

RENÉE FELTZ: Rosalinda tries to stay in touch with the women who pass through the house after being released from detention. She worries that some had their bonds paid for by traffickers. But she says even those who are reunited with family face trauma from their detention ordeal.

ROSALINDAMALDONADO: I feel like when they’re telling me they were put in these cells, or they tell me they’re going to take my children away, being the person who they are releasing all the pain, I start telling them, "Forgive my country," even though this is not my country. I’m Mexican. I’m undocumented. But I say I’ll forgive my country, you know, because this is a new step for you.

RENÉE FELTZ: In San Antonio, I’m Renée Feltz for Democracy Now!

AMYGOODMAN: That report by Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz, who joins us now. Renée, your thoughts as you were in Texas doing this story?

RENÉE FELTZ: Amy, it was striking to see how young the children were coming out of detention, just babies in their mothers’ arms. And while I was down there, reportedly one woman in detention tried to commit suicide.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we’re also joined by Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. Her affidavit in a lawsuit challenging detention of women and children as a method of deterrence to mass migration was cited by the federal judge in his order to halt the practice. Explain that lawsuit, Barbara.

BARBARAHINES: Well, that lawsuit was a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Texas Immigration Clinic and a private law firm to challenge the practice of holding mothers and children to send a deterrence message to other families, arguing that these mothers and children were a national security risk, picking the most vulnerable group of immigrants coming to the United States, really asylum seekers, women and children fleeing the most horrific violence, and saying that that group had to be locked up in private prisons that are run on the profit motive.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about this issue of some people saying that these are not asylum seekers, but actually just undocumented immigrants.

BARBARAHINES: Well, that’s actually not true in our experience. The vast majority of the women and children that have been held at all of the detention facilities that have been ramped up since June are asylum seekers. They have passed the initial screening, which is called the credible fear interview, to show that they meet the threshold standard for asylum. And under our international law and our domestic law, they have the right to apply for asylum to seek protection in this country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are some of the conditions that they’re being held under that you mentioned in your submission?

BARBARAHINES: Well, you know, first of all, these are run by—the facility in Karnes is run by the GEO Group. The facility in Dilley is run by the Corrections Corporation of America. The Corrections Corporation of America is same facility that ran Hutto, the last iteration of family detention that I actually did litigate, where children were held in—babies in prison uniforms, and these corporations thought that was acceptable.

The women and the children have no control over their lives. Everything is regimented—what time they get up, what they eat. The food is very bad. The medical care is substandard. Guards, just like when we litigated at Hutto, as I said, which was the last version of family detention, women have told us that they have been threatened that if their children misbehave, they’ll be reported to the immigration judge, that it can negatively affect their case. Children who get out of line—and, of course, these are young children. How can you have children running around that don’t stay in line? We had a mother with a baby that was learning to crawl, and that baby was not allowed on the ground, because the guards at GEO said that that was unsafe. She was forced to carry a baby around, which, of course, has terrible developmental effects for a child who is trying to learn to crawl and walk.

AMYGOODMAN: Barbara Hines, we have to leave that here, but we’re going to do part two of the conversation and post at online at democracy.org, especially what happens in the courtroom, when the women see the judge through a video screen from prison. Barbara Hines, former director of the Immigration Clinic at University of Texas Law School, and Renée Feltz, thanks so much. And thanks to Tish Stringer for her video.

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Wed, 25 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -040017 Shots: Police Killing of Unarmed Mexican Farmworker in Washington State Sparks Protesthttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/27/17_shots_police_killing_of_unarmed
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-27:en/story/60ad6d AMY GOODMAN : After our next segment, we&#8217;ll talk about Governor Scott Walker comparing unions to the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But first, this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, for the second time in about two weeks, the Mexican government has expressed outrage over police shootings of unarmed immigrants by police officers in the United States. Mexican authorities say police in Grapevine, Texas, violated a decades-old treaty by waiting four days to inform them of the killing of Rubén García Villalpando. Police say they shot García early Saturday morning during a traffic stop, after he defied orders to halt and walked toward a patrol car with his hands in the air. García&#8217;s attorney and a local activist described their account of the shooting to news station KDFW .
CARLOS QUINTANILLA : When the officers said, &quot;Don&#8217;t move, mother F,&quot; he stayed there. And for one reason or another, Rubén begins to walk towards a police officer, and that one second passed, and the officer fired twice—pop, pop—and Rubén was dead.
DOMINGO GARCIA : When this video is released, you will show that there is a man, who has no prior criminal record, a wife and four children, who puts his hands on his head, and is shot through twice because he asked the officer to treat him with respect and dignity and not to be calling him &quot;mother F,&quot; multiple times.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The shooting in Texas comes just 10 days after the police killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington. Zambrano was reportedly throwing rocks at police officers when he was killed. The incident happened at a busy intersection. Several eyewitnesses recorded cellphone video that shows Zambrano turning to face police, raising his hands before he&#8217;s shot. On Thursday, authorities confirmed how many times they fired at Zambrano. This is Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department.
SGT . KEN LATTIN : Ultimately—this was a question that you had had—we&#8217;ve determined that they fired their weapons 17 times. Seventeen rounds were fired. Of those, five or six rounds struck Mr. Zambrano. We say five or six rounds because there&#8217;s obviously been two autopsies: one by—conducted by the medical examiner that was brought in by the coroner, and then, as Mr. Sant specified last week, the body was released to the family, they brought in their own independent pathologist to do an autopsy. And so, those results of both autopsies are not yet complete. Without going into any sort of gruesome detail, it&#8217;s not easy to determine, when you look at entry wounds and exit wounds, for sure, how many rounds.
AMY GOODMAN : The Pasco police also said Zambrano was not shot in the back, contradicting an independent autopsy by the victim&#8217;s family that found two entry wounds on the back of his body—one on the back his right arm and another in his buttocks. Zambrano&#8217;s family has now hired the attorney for Michael Brown&#8217;s family in Ferguson, Missouri, Benjamin Crump, who visited Pasco to meet with them this week. Pasco is about, oh, three-and-a-half hours southeast of Seattle.
All of this comes as the Mexican government reports 75 Mexicans have been killed by law officers in the United States since 2006.
For more, we go to Pasco, Washington, where we&#8217;re joined by Felix Vargas, the chairman of Consejo Latino, a group of local businessmen in Pasco who are working with Zambrano&#8217;s family and helping to call for justice in his shooting death. Vargas is a retired U.S. diplomat and Army colonel.
And we&#8217;re joined in Seattle by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the fatal police shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe is needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let&#8217;s go directly to Pasco. Felix Vargas, explain what happened and the fact there&#8217;s so much video of this. It was during rush hour?
FELIX VARGAS : Yes, it was. A crowded intersection, downtown Pasco, a gentleman is seen throwing rocks at cars. Police are called. There&#8217;s a minor scuffle. And then you see the gentleman running across the street away from the police. The police draw their weapons and fire an initial volley of shots at him. It appears that they hit him. He gets to the other side of the street, he turns left, heads west. The police are in pursuit of him, three, four yards behind him. He&#8217;s wounded. He turns around, appears to raise his arms up. He does not have a knife or a gun in his hand. And then he is effectively executed by the second volley of shots. In all, as you said, 17 shots were fired. The initial autopsy shows that five to six rounds made impact. We have a second autopsy, which was performed by the family&#8217;s forensic examiner, and that shows seven to eight impacts on the body. So, that is what has happened. It has really disturbed this community as never before.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mr. Vargas, what has been so far the reaction of local authorities in terms of the police officers involved?
FELIX VARGAS : Well, the authorities have promised to withhold judgment until a police investigation of the police shooting takes place. There&#8217;s a special investigative unit, which is set up, excluding the participation by the Pasco police. But that particular unit is talking to witnesses and doing their own investigation. They do emphasize that this will be an impartial, objective investigation. That is really the process, after which the Franklin County prosecutor will determine if there are sufficient grounds to levy charges against the three police shooters, and then the case will go to trial. There&#8217;s also a call for a coroner&#8217;s inquest after this particular investigation. It is simply not a credible investigation—I need to add that.
AMY GOODMAN : Why isn&#8217;t it credible?
FELIX VARGAS : It&#8217;s not credible because it involves a group of police officers, who are brothers in uniform of the perpetrators of the shooting. It is not credible because in the last six months we&#8217;ve had four incidents, including this one; in the three previous incidents, the police have been exonerated. There is one other example of a shooting here six months ago of a young man also who suffered from mental illness, as did Antonio Zambrano, and also suffered from substance abuse—similar circumstances, again, shot with excessive—by excessive use of force here by the police. There is an inherent conflict of interest here whenever you have a police organization investigating its own. We need a higher-level investigation here, and that can only come from the Department of Justice here, that the—you know, that the community can have some reasonable grounds to believe that it will be independent. So, it&#8217;s important that we have this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the general state of relations in your part of the state, there&#8217;s been, obviously, a growing population of Mexican, especially Mexican, population as a result of the large agriculture there in the area. Can you talk about the state of relations in Washington?
FELIX VARGAS : Well, the state of relations is really quite good. We do have a city of 68,000, 60 percent of which are Hispanic. They&#8217;re drawn here primarily because of our very vibrant agricultural economy that we have here. And we really haven&#8217;t had any incidents. There is some unease with the police, because they don&#8217;t have enough certified language speakers. It is a police made up primarily of Anglo policemen. So, the relations are cordial. I wouldn&#8217;t say they&#8217;re warm. We have, as an organization, tried to improve that relationship and to build confidence within the community towards the police force. We met with the police chief two weeks before the incident to review his policies and procedures and to assure ourselves that we will not have an incident similar to the one in Ferguson. We received assurances that the training, the protocols were all in place to avoid this kind of situation. We&#8217;re greatly disappointed, really, in the leadership of the police chief, because we simply do not know if he knows what goes on within his police force.
AMY GOODMAN : You are a leading member of the community, a businessman, former military. Are you calling for the police chief to step down?
FELIX VARGAS : Not at this point. You know, there are things that have happened which caused us to believe that he&#8217;s not in control of his police force. It&#8217;s premature to do that. I think we need to let certain investigatory practices proceed. We would like to see active engagement by the Department of Justice in this regard. While the police chief has, I think, some lack in credibility, we&#8217;re not prepared to call for his—for him to step down at this point. We may do so later on.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we&#8217;re also joined by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe was needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident. Could you—Jennifer, could you summarize your concerns for us?
JENNIFER SHAW : Well, sure, and thank you for reaching out to us. You know, we&#8217;re seeing across the country a real need for a culture change within our police departments. As Mr. Vargas points out, it is concerning to have police investigating their own, and particularly the notion of trying to find something wrong with the person that was shot as a justification for the shooting. We saw the same thing with Trayvon Martin. There was comments about he smoked pot. Other—you know, the comments about Michael Brown, that he had engaged in other criminal activity, at a time when the officer wasn&#8217;t even aware of it. So it&#8217;s really not relevant what the victim of the shooting was doing two weeks ago, or two weeks prior to the shooting, and to have that be what appears to be the primary focus is really concerning. It&#8217;s also concerning that the police officers that were involved in the shooting have still not been interviewed by the investigators.
AMY GOODMAN : And so, what needs to happen right now, Jennifer Shaw?
JENNIFER SHAW : Well, certainly, there needs to be a full and impartial investigation of this incident, but also there needs to be a review of the current policies and practices and training within the Pasco Police Department. What we&#8217;re seeing in Washington, and really across the country, is that police departments have been using outdated use-of-force policies. Their training is really much more focused on how to use force, not how to avoid using force. And so, tragically, we keep seeing these kinds of incidents.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to go back to Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department answering questions during Thursday&#8217;s news conference.
REPORTER : Have you interviewed the three officers?
SGT . KEN LATTIN : Good question. So as we&#8217;ve—that seems to be a big question each week. And we&#8217;ve got to have all the information before they sit down with those, so they&#8217;ve got to get those transcriptions done, so that the lead investigator that will sit down and interview with the officers has all the information. So, that—we&#8217;re not to that point yet. It&#8217;s still being set up.
REPORTER : So all the other witnesses that you want to talk to would be interviewed first, all that material transcribed—
SGT . KEN LATTIN : Absolutely.
REPORTER : —and the three officers will be the last people you interview?
SGT . KEN LATTIN : Correct.
AMY GOODMAN : Jennifer Shaw, your comment on this? The witnesses will be interviewed first, and then the officers will be interviewed last.
JENNIFER SHAW : Well, when you think of any other investigation of a shooting by an individual, of another individual, with witnesses around, imagine that the police would wait 10 days, two weeks, before interviewing the person who was doing the shooting. It seems unreasonable. It seems, actually, kind of dangerous, for public safety purposes, to wait that long for the witnesses—or, for the officers to sit down and kind of read through everything and come up with a story. I mean, the idea of an investigation is to find out what happened from everybody that was involved. And it seems like these officers are being given special consideration because they&#8217;re police officers.
AMY GOODMAN : Jennifer Shaw, we want to thank you for joining us from the Washington ACLU in Seattle, and, Felix Vargas, for joining us from your home in Pasco, Washington, with Consejo Latino. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report , as we move on to our last segment. Juan? AMYGOODMAN: After our next segment, we’ll talk about Governor Scott Walker comparing unions to the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But first, this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, for the second time in about two weeks, the Mexican government has expressed outrage over police shootings of unarmed immigrants by police officers in the United States. Mexican authorities say police in Grapevine, Texas, violated a decades-old treaty by waiting four days to inform them of the killing of Rubén García Villalpando. Police say they shot García early Saturday morning during a traffic stop, after he defied orders to halt and walked toward a patrol car with his hands in the air. García’s attorney and a local activist described their account of the shooting to news station KDFW.

CARLOSQUINTANILLA: When the officers said, "Don’t move, mother F," he stayed there. And for one reason or another, Rubén begins to walk towards a police officer, and that one second passed, and the officer fired twice—pop, pop—and Rubén was dead.

DOMINGOGARCIA: When this video is released, you will show that there is a man, who has no prior criminal record, a wife and four children, who puts his hands on his head, and is shot through twice because he asked the officer to treat him with respect and dignity and not to be calling him "mother F," multiple times.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The shooting in Texas comes just 10 days after the police killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington. Zambrano was reportedly throwing rocks at police officers when he was killed. The incident happened at a busy intersection. Several eyewitnesses recorded cellphone video that shows Zambrano turning to face police, raising his hands before he’s shot. On Thursday, authorities confirmed how many times they fired at Zambrano. This is Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department.

SGT. KENLATTIN: Ultimately—this was a question that you had had—we’ve determined that they fired their weapons 17 times. Seventeen rounds were fired. Of those, five or six rounds struck Mr. Zambrano. We say five or six rounds because there’s obviously been two autopsies: one by—conducted by the medical examiner that was brought in by the coroner, and then, as Mr. Sant specified last week, the body was released to the family, they brought in their own independent pathologist to do an autopsy. And so, those results of both autopsies are not yet complete. Without going into any sort of gruesome detail, it’s not easy to determine, when you look at entry wounds and exit wounds, for sure, how many rounds.

AMYGOODMAN: The Pasco police also said Zambrano was not shot in the back, contradicting an independent autopsy by the victim’s family that found two entry wounds on the back of his body—one on the back his right arm and another in his buttocks. Zambrano’s family has now hired the attorney for Michael Brown’s family in Ferguson, Missouri, Benjamin Crump, who visited Pasco to meet with them this week. Pasco is about, oh, three-and-a-half hours southeast of Seattle.

All of this comes as the Mexican government reports 75 Mexicans have been killed by law officers in the United States since 2006.

For more, we go to Pasco, Washington, where we’re joined by Felix Vargas, the chairman of Consejo Latino, a group of local businessmen in Pasco who are working with Zambrano’s family and helping to call for justice in his shooting death. Vargas is a retired U.S. diplomat and Army colonel.

And we’re joined in Seattle by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the fatal police shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe is needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s go directly to Pasco. Felix Vargas, explain what happened and the fact there’s so much video of this. It was during rush hour?

FELIXVARGAS: Yes, it was. A crowded intersection, downtown Pasco, a gentleman is seen throwing rocks at cars. Police are called. There’s a minor scuffle. And then you see the gentleman running across the street away from the police. The police draw their weapons and fire an initial volley of shots at him. It appears that they hit him. He gets to the other side of the street, he turns left, heads west. The police are in pursuit of him, three, four yards behind him. He’s wounded. He turns around, appears to raise his arms up. He does not have a knife or a gun in his hand. And then he is effectively executed by the second volley of shots. In all, as you said, 17 shots were fired. The initial autopsy shows that five to six rounds made impact. We have a second autopsy, which was performed by the family’s forensic examiner, and that shows seven to eight impacts on the body. So, that is what has happened. It has really disturbed this community as never before.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mr. Vargas, what has been so far the reaction of local authorities in terms of the police officers involved?

FELIXVARGAS: Well, the authorities have promised to withhold judgment until a police investigation of the police shooting takes place. There’s a special investigative unit, which is set up, excluding the participation by the Pasco police. But that particular unit is talking to witnesses and doing their own investigation. They do emphasize that this will be an impartial, objective investigation. That is really the process, after which the Franklin County prosecutor will determine if there are sufficient grounds to levy charges against the three police shooters, and then the case will go to trial. There’s also a call for a coroner’s inquest after this particular investigation. It is simply not a credible investigation—I need to add that.

AMYGOODMAN: Why isn’t it credible?

FELIXVARGAS: It’s not credible because it involves a group of police officers, who are brothers in uniform of the perpetrators of the shooting. It is not credible because in the last six months we’ve had four incidents, including this one; in the three previous incidents, the police have been exonerated. There is one other example of a shooting here six months ago of a young man also who suffered from mental illness, as did Antonio Zambrano, and also suffered from substance abuse—similar circumstances, again, shot with excessive—by excessive use of force here by the police. There is an inherent conflict of interest here whenever you have a police organization investigating its own. We need a higher-level investigation here, and that can only come from the Department of Justice here, that the—you know, that the community can have some reasonable grounds to believe that it will be independent. So, it’s important that we have this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the general state of relations in your part of the state, there’s been, obviously, a growing population of Mexican, especially Mexican, population as a result of the large agriculture there in the area. Can you talk about the state of relations in Washington?

FELIXVARGAS: Well, the state of relations is really quite good. We do have a city of 68,000, 60 percent of which are Hispanic. They’re drawn here primarily because of our very vibrant agricultural economy that we have here. And we really haven’t had any incidents. There is some unease with the police, because they don’t have enough certified language speakers. It is a police made up primarily of Anglo policemen. So, the relations are cordial. I wouldn’t say they’re warm. We have, as an organization, tried to improve that relationship and to build confidence within the community towards the police force. We met with the police chief two weeks before the incident to review his policies and procedures and to assure ourselves that we will not have an incident similar to the one in Ferguson. We received assurances that the training, the protocols were all in place to avoid this kind of situation. We’re greatly disappointed, really, in the leadership of the police chief, because we simply do not know if he knows what goes on within his police force.

AMYGOODMAN: You are a leading member of the community, a businessman, former military. Are you calling for the police chief to step down?

FELIXVARGAS: Not at this point. You know, there are things that have happened which caused us to believe that he’s not in control of his police force. It’s premature to do that. I think we need to let certain investigatory practices proceed. We would like to see active engagement by the Department of Justice in this regard. While the police chief has, I think, some lack in credibility, we’re not prepared to call for his—for him to step down at this point. We may do so later on.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we’re also joined by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe was needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident. Could you—Jennifer, could you summarize your concerns for us?

JENNIFERSHAW: Well, sure, and thank you for reaching out to us. You know, we’re seeing across the country a real need for a culture change within our police departments. As Mr. Vargas points out, it is concerning to have police investigating their own, and particularly the notion of trying to find something wrong with the person that was shot as a justification for the shooting. We saw the same thing with Trayvon Martin. There was comments about he smoked pot. Other—you know, the comments about Michael Brown, that he had engaged in other criminal activity, at a time when the officer wasn’t even aware of it. So it’s really not relevant what the victim of the shooting was doing two weeks ago, or two weeks prior to the shooting, and to have that be what appears to be the primary focus is really concerning. It’s also concerning that the police officers that were involved in the shooting have still not been interviewed by the investigators.

AMYGOODMAN: And so, what needs to happen right now, Jennifer Shaw?

JENNIFERSHAW: Well, certainly, there needs to be a full and impartial investigation of this incident, but also there needs to be a review of the current policies and practices and training within the Pasco Police Department. What we’re seeing in Washington, and really across the country, is that police departments have been using outdated use-of-force policies. Their training is really much more focused on how to use force, not how to avoid using force. And so, tragically, we keep seeing these kinds of incidents.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to go back to Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department answering questions during Thursday’s news conference.

REPORTER: Have you interviewed the three officers?

SGT. KENLATTIN: Good question. So as we’ve—that seems to be a big question each week. And we’ve got to have all the information before they sit down with those, so they’ve got to get those transcriptions done, so that the lead investigator that will sit down and interview with the officers has all the information. So, that—we’re not to that point yet. It’s still being set up.

REPORTER: So all the other witnesses that you want to talk to would be interviewed first, all that material transcribed—

SGT. KENLATTIN: Absolutely.

REPORTER: —and the three officers will be the last people you interview?

SGT. KENLATTIN: Correct.

AMYGOODMAN: Jennifer Shaw, your comment on this? The witnesses will be interviewed first, and then the officers will be interviewed last.

JENNIFERSHAW: Well, when you think of any other investigation of a shooting by an individual, of another individual, with witnesses around, imagine that the police would wait 10 days, two weeks, before interviewing the person who was doing the shooting. It seems unreasonable. It seems, actually, kind of dangerous, for public safety purposes, to wait that long for the witnesses—or, for the officers to sit down and kind of read through everything and come up with a story. I mean, the idea of an investigation is to find out what happened from everybody that was involved. And it seems like these officers are being given special consideration because they’re police officers.

AMYGOODMAN: Jennifer Shaw, we want to thank you for joining us from the Washington ACLU in Seattle, and, Felix Vargas, for joining us from your home in Pasco, Washington, with Consejo Latino. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we move on to our last segment. Juan?

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Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Ruling by Right-Wing Judge Delays Long-Awaited Reprieve for Millions of Undocumented Immigrantshttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/19/ruling_by_right_wing_judge_delays
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-19:en/story/f8af14 AMY GOODMAN : President Obama&#8217;s plan to shield as many as five million immigrants from deportation was supposed to begin taking its first applications this week. But late Monday night, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, issued an injunction after a motion filed by Texas and 25 other states. Now the administration says it will comply with the ruling and delay accepting applications for work permits and deportation reprieves. Speaking at the White House, President Obama said he&#8217;s confident the decision will be struck down on appeal.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : You know, keep in mind that this is something that we necessarily have to make choices about, because we&#8217;ve got 11 million people here who we&#8217;re not all going to deport. Many of them are our neighbors. Many of them are working in our communities. Many of their children are U.S. citizens and, as we saw with the executive action that I took for DREAMers, people who had come here as young children and are American by any other name except for their legal papers.
AMY GOODMAN : President Obama&#8217;s executive order on immigration would apply to those brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for at least five years, as well as those who have lived here for at least five years and are the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. It remains on hold as the case is appealed, possibly ending up before the Supreme Court.
Well, for more, we&#8217;re joined by three guests. In Washington, D.C., Marielena Hincapié is executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which filed a court brief opposing the challenge to Obama&#8217;s order. In Houston, Texas, José Espinoza is with us, an undocumented immigrant who had hoped to apply for relief on Wednesday. And in Houston, as well, Oscar Hernandez, who was granted relief in 2012, now a lead field organizer with United We Dream in Houston, Texas, where he&#8217;s been helping to get eligible immigrants like José ready to apply.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let&#8217;s begin with Marielena Hincapié. Talk about the significance of this judge&#8217;s ruling and the court case on which it was based.
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Thanks for the invitation, Amy. This is an extremely disappointing decision by a conservative judge in Brownsville, Texas. It&#8217;s not a surprise that Texas and 25 other states chose Brownsville to file this lawsuit. This is—while it is disappointing, it is also an outlier. This decision pretty much ignores decades of legal precedent and constitutional authority. It&#8217;s interesting the judge did not rule the president&#8217;s initiatives as unconstitutional. He decided to focus, in 123 pages, on a very procedural issue, which basically the judge found that the administration failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act and didn&#8217;t go through a public comment period—that, despite the fact that legal scholars across the ideological spectrum agree with us that this wasn&#8217;t required, that the president has prosecutorial discretion, just as any other law enforcement agency does, to decide how to use its limited resources, who to deport and who not to deport. And recently, the Supreme Court in 2012, in the Arizona v. U.S. decision, said very clearly and actually gave examples, such as the administration has the authority not to deport parents of U.S. citizen children, workers and others for humanitarian reasons. The president simply expanded the DACA 2012 initiative that he announced then, which is not being challenged by Texas and these states, either.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to read from Judge Andrew Hanen&#8217;s opinion. He wrote, quote, &quot;The court finds that the government&#8217;s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country. ... Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with this country&#8217;s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states&#8217; resources.&quot; Marielena Hincapié, talk about what he is saying here.
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Yeah, the interesting thing, Amy, is our communities, especially those that live and work at the border, know full well that in fact this administration has very aggressively enforced. There&#8217;s nothing about lax enforcement under the Obama administration. The border is more secure than ever before. And we&#8217;ve got record numbers of deportations in this country. What the administration finally did—and this is as a result of immigrants who have fought for and won this very significant victory. We&#8217;re talking about DREAMers, including some of the folks on today&#8217;s show, DREAMers&#8217; mothers and fathers, workers, who have fought for this, including putting their lives on the line—civil disobedience, hunger strikes, etc. That is what has brought us to this place: the grassroots energy. And the judge basically decided to ignore even law enforcement leaders who came out in support and said we need this for public safety reasons.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to comments by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who led the lawsuit against Obama&#8217;s executive order on immigration, along with 25 other states. He spoke on Wednesday.
GOV . GREG ABBOTT : The district judge ruled that it was clear that the president&#8217;s executive action violated what&#8217;s called the Administrative Procedure Act. And because of that, it was unnecessary for the judge to dig deeper into the other legal claims that we made. It is abundantly clear that the Obama administration has violated the Administrative Procedure Act. And as a result, I think that on that issue alone, we will win all the way up to the appellate ranks.
AMY GOODMAN : After a judge ruled in his favor, Governor Abbott tweeted President Obama&#8217;s order, quote, &quot;has been ruled unconstitutional.&quot; Marielena Hincapié, is that correct?
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Absolutely not. That is incorrect. And in fact, it&#8217;s a reminder that Governor Abbott&#8217;s comments are—this lawsuit is not about the legality or the constitutionality. This is a communications campaign by opponents of the executive action and, frankly, by opponents of immigrants. It&#8217;s not a surprise, Amy, that when you look at the states that have filed this lawsuit, these are states that have passed anti-immigrant legislation, anti-worker legislation, anti-choice legislation, and who really are basically afraid of the demographic shift happening in this country. That is what this lawsuit is about.
AMY GOODMAN : Now, it&#8217;s not as if we didn&#8217;t know what the judge&#8217;s personal views were. He previously called President Obama&#8217;s reprieve for undocumented immigrants, quote, &quot;an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.&quot;
MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Yes, unfortunately, that is why we expected this decision. And we expected the decision, our communities are ready and prepared, and we see this as a temporary setback. This is not the end of this. And in fact, it&#8217;s really important for viewers and listeners to understand that this decision does not affect the current DACA program, either. Those who currently have DACA under the 2012 initiative or who are up for renewal or who haven&#8217;t applied yet are still protected. That this decision—and it doesn&#8217;t also affect any of the other initiatives announced by the president on November, including the new priorities with respect to deportation. AMYGOODMAN: President Obama’s plan to shield as many as five million immigrants from deportation was supposed to begin taking its first applications this week. But late Monday night, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, Texas, issued an injunction after a motion filed by Texas and 25 other states. Now the administration says it will comply with the ruling and delay accepting applications for work permits and deportation reprieves. Speaking at the White House, President Obama said he’s confident the decision will be struck down on appeal.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: You know, keep in mind that this is something that we necessarily have to make choices about, because we’ve got 11 million people here who we’re not all going to deport. Many of them are our neighbors. Many of them are working in our communities. Many of their children are U.S. citizens and, as we saw with the executive action that I took for DREAMers, people who had come here as young children and are American by any other name except for their legal papers.

AMYGOODMAN: President Obama’s executive order on immigration would apply to those brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for at least five years, as well as those who have lived here for at least five years and are the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. It remains on hold as the case is appealed, possibly ending up before the Supreme Court.

Well, for more, we’re joined by three guests. In Washington, D.C., Marielena Hincapié is executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which filed a court brief opposing the challenge to Obama’s order. In Houston, Texas, José Espinoza is with us, an undocumented immigrant who had hoped to apply for relief on Wednesday. And in Houston, as well, Oscar Hernandez, who was granted relief in 2012, now a lead field organizer with United We Dream in Houston, Texas, where he’s been helping to get eligible immigrants like José ready to apply.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Marielena Hincapié. Talk about the significance of this judge’s ruling and the court case on which it was based.

MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Thanks for the invitation, Amy. This is an extremely disappointing decision by a conservative judge in Brownsville, Texas. It’s not a surprise that Texas and 25 other states chose Brownsville to file this lawsuit. This is—while it is disappointing, it is also an outlier. This decision pretty much ignores decades of legal precedent and constitutional authority. It’s interesting the judge did not rule the president’s initiatives as unconstitutional. He decided to focus, in 123 pages, on a very procedural issue, which basically the judge found that the administration failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act and didn’t go through a public comment period—that, despite the fact that legal scholars across the ideological spectrum agree with us that this wasn’t required, that the president has prosecutorial discretion, just as any other law enforcement agency does, to decide how to use its limited resources, who to deport and who not to deport. And recently, the Supreme Court in 2012, in the Arizona v. U.S. decision, said very clearly and actually gave examples, such as the administration has the authority not to deport parents of U.S. citizen children, workers and others for humanitarian reasons. The president simply expanded the DACA 2012 initiative that he announced then, which is not being challenged by Texas and these states, either.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to read from Judge Andrew Hanen’s opinion. He wrote, quote, "The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country. ... Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with this country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources." Marielena Hincapié, talk about what he is saying here.

MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Yeah, the interesting thing, Amy, is our communities, especially those that live and work at the border, know full well that in fact this administration has very aggressively enforced. There’s nothing about lax enforcement under the Obama administration. The border is more secure than ever before. And we’ve got record numbers of deportations in this country. What the administration finally did—and this is as a result of immigrants who have fought for and won this very significant victory. We’re talking about DREAMers, including some of the folks on today’s show, DREAMers’ mothers and fathers, workers, who have fought for this, including putting their lives on the line—civil disobedience, hunger strikes, etc. That is what has brought us to this place: the grassroots energy. And the judge basically decided to ignore even law enforcement leaders who came out in support and said we need this for public safety reasons.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to comments by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who led the lawsuit against Obama’s executive order on immigration, along with 25 other states. He spoke on Wednesday.

GOV. GREGABBOTT: The district judge ruled that it was clear that the president’s executive action violated what’s called the Administrative Procedure Act. And because of that, it was unnecessary for the judge to dig deeper into the other legal claims that we made. It is abundantly clear that the Obama administration has violated the Administrative Procedure Act. And as a result, I think that on that issue alone, we will win all the way up to the appellate ranks.

AMYGOODMAN: After a judge ruled in his favor, Governor Abbott tweeted President Obama’s order, quote, "has been ruled unconstitutional." Marielena Hincapié, is that correct?

MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Absolutely not. That is incorrect. And in fact, it’s a reminder that Governor Abbott’s comments are—this lawsuit is not about the legality or the constitutionality. This is a communications campaign by opponents of the executive action and, frankly, by opponents of immigrants. It’s not a surprise, Amy, that when you look at the states that have filed this lawsuit, these are states that have passed anti-immigrant legislation, anti-worker legislation, anti-choice legislation, and who really are basically afraid of the demographic shift happening in this country. That is what this lawsuit is about.

AMYGOODMAN: Now, it’s not as if we didn’t know what the judge’s personal views were. He previously called President Obama’s reprieve for undocumented immigrants, quote, "an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society."

MARIELENA HINCAPIÉ: Yes, unfortunately, that is why we expected this decision. And we expected the decision, our communities are ready and prepared, and we see this as a temporary setback. This is not the end of this. And in fact, it’s really important for viewers and listeners to understand that this decision does not affect the current DACA program, either. Those who currently have DACA under the 2012 initiative or who are up for renewal or who haven’t applied yet are still protected. That this decision—and it doesn’t also affect any of the other initiatives announced by the president on November, including the new priorities with respect to deportation.

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Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Coming Out of the Shadows: Meet José Espinoza, Undocumented Worker Impacted by Delayed Reprievehttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/19/coming_out_of_the_shadows_meet
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-19:en/story/12be95 AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to Oscar Hernandez and José Espinoza in Houston. Oscar, you were a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA , that Marielena was just talking about. This doesn&#8217;t affect you. But you are also a lead organizer for United We Dream in Houston. You organized for this executive order. Can you explain how you organized and what this judge&#8217;s decision means for you?
OSCAR HERNANDEZ : Yes. So, for this executive action, we took a lot of measures. This has happened since way back in 2010, when the Senate failed us and the DREAM Act didn&#8217;t pass. So we were organizing to fight for some kind of administrative relief for our community. I was lucky to benefit in 2012, to be able to apply for deferred action. And it&#8217;s because of that that I&#8217;m able to help our community. Right now we still are servicing people. We&#8217;re helping people apply for deferred action. We have legal clinics throughout the year, and making sure that our community know what&#8217;s happening.
Like the attorney said before, we were expecting this. I mean, I live in Texas. We know the reality of what the demographic is like here. So we were expecting this to happen, and we&#8217;re more than prepared to inform our communities and not be afraid, to know that this is a temporary setback, but it&#8217;s only temporary. We will be able to continue our process, and, more than anything, to know that just because we&#8217;re here undocumented does not mean that we do not have value, and it does not mean that we won&#8217;t contribute.
So, through our program, what we want to do is make sure that our community feels empowered, is properly informed, and that we&#8217;re fighting for immigrant rights. And if you can benefit from DACA , we want to be able to service the community. This is only a delay. This is not a delay for United We Dream. We will continue to do the services we do. We will continue to inform our community. And those who can benefit from the first deferred action that came out in 2012, we&#8217;ll be able to help them. And those who may benefit from the 2014 deferred action expansion and deferred action for parents of American citizens and legal permanent residents, we&#8217;ll be offering services and information on that. So, this is not going to stop us.
AMY GOODMAN : José Espinoza, I want to first of all thank you for joining us. I know you drove an hour and a half to get to this interview, and it&#8217;s your first TV interview. You&#8217;re risking a lot to come out of the shadows and say you&#8217;re an undocumented immigrant. You were planning to apply this week?
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : Yes, I was.
AMY GOODMAN : And talk about your own story and why this was so important to you.
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : Well, it was so important for me, because it&#8217;s just not just me, it was also my family, because for the years, for so many years, I&#8217;ve been looking for an opportunity to become legal and be in this country and able to work. And it was for my family to finally be in—just for a better life here in the United States. I&#8217;m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN : So, in your time here in the United States, when did you come to the United States? Where have you been working?
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : I came to the United States as a kid when I was 14 years old, and I started working in different places. And right now, what I&#8217;ve been doing the most for the last 12 years is I&#8217;ve been working in the oil field industry. And I&#8217;ve been doing—I&#8217;ve been working for companies known worldwide, and this is—this is something that can benefit—that has been benefiting me and my family because of this.
AMY GOODMAN : So you&#8217;ve been married for 15 years? You came here when you were 14 years old. All three of your children are U.S. citizens?
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : Yes, ma&#8217;am, they are.
AMY GOODMAN : So you were too old to apply under DACA , as Oscar Hernandez did?
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : Yes. I didn&#8217;t have the age for that. And finally, when this new law came in place, I was very excited, and I was willing to get—to move out of the shadows, to come out. And through Oscar&#8217;s help and their organization, I was—finally, I saw the chance to do that. And actually, I had everything ready, but one day before, my dream came down.
AMY GOODMAN : Oscar Hernandez, what are you telling people like José to do right now? I mean, José came to your workshops, he got everything in order. What happens now?
OSCAR HERNANDEZ : First of all, save your money. We want people to avoid fraud. We know that our community is very vulnerable, and we want to make sure that they get the services we deserve. Second of all, prepare documentation. Like I said before, this is something we expected, and we will continue to fight for immigrant rights. Deferred action was not given to us. This was something that was organized by undocumented immigrant youth in our community, and we were able to win this. And we will continue to prevail, and we will continue to fight for immigrant rights and make sure that we get the representation we deserve.
So anybody who&#8217;s out there who might potentially benefit this, who might think they benefit from this, go to our webpage. You can go to UnitedWeDream.org and get more information. And then you can also look up services near where you live, where they provide either free legal services or fees at a nominal fee.
If you&#8217;re preparing your documents right now, make sure you have everything in order. Look for people that you can trust in your community. But don&#8217;t be afraid. You know, we expected this to happen, and we expect to pass—we expect something to pass within the coming months or coming weeks. So, you know, right now we&#8217;re hoping that President Obama presses the Department of Justice for an appeal, to make sure that we move this as quickly as possible. But this is not the end of the road for us. We will continue to fight for immigrant rights, and we will continue to help people who may benefit from DACA and DAPA , and to help our immigrant community.
AMY GOODMAN : Oscar, it may not end just with this court decision. Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he&#8217;ll sign legislation to repeal the state&#8217;s DREAM Act if it comes before him. This is Governor Abbott.
GOV . GREG ABBOTT : The way the law is written is that students who are applying for in-state tuition under that law must be making progress toward establishing legal status. And there is absolutely no rules or regulations or determinations to see whether or not they are fulfilling the law as is written. So, at a minimum, the law has to be fixed.
AMY GOODMAN : The Texas DREAM Act offers in-state tuition rates to children of undocumented immigrants. It actually went into effect under his predecessor, Governor Perry. Oscar Hernandez, your reaction to Governor Abbott? And as we wrap up, your parents, where, Oscar, are they? And where do they stand in all of this legislation and these executive actions?
OSCAR HERNANDEZ : So it&#8217;s really good you bring that up, because the fact of the matter is that this executive action, this deferred action, it is not really a solution to the issue of undocumented immigrants here. It&#8217;s a step forward. It&#8217;s a step forward in the right direction. But, for example, my parents, who have been here all my life—they own houses, they own a business—they&#8217;re still undocumented. And based on the regulations from USCIS , they might not potentially benefit from the deferred action for parent of legal—parent of American citizens or legal permanent residents. So we know that this is not the final step for us. This is not the final step for our community.
And even when it comes to Greg Abbott&#8217;s comments, referring to the Texas in-state tuition that allows undocumented immigrants in Texas to get financial aid to go to university, we know that this is a tack—this is more playing politics with our community. And that, to me, is something I will not stand for. You know, people over politics, that&#8217;s one of the big things we tell people, that we will not let anybody play politics with our immigrant community, because that&#8217;s not—that&#8217;s not how I know this country is based on.
So, just like a battle that there might be going on right now for deferred action, there is one happening for in-state tuition, and this is something we are also involved in. If there&#8217;s any undocumented youth out there who might be graduating, who also might feel like they&#8217;re hopeless because they might think that they can&#8217;t get a job later on, they might think that they can&#8217;t go to school, we&#8217;re here to tell them that you can. We know people that have done this before. We know Texas has helped us, undocumented immigrants, apply to colleges and then get financial aid. And we will continue to fight for them, to make sure that other immigrants and other undocumented youth that are here can take advantage of these services. And we will continue to fight for parents, who might not benefit from deferred action, and our LGBTQ community, who sometime is neglected when it comes to this. So, no, there is a lot of power with undocumented immigrants, there is a lot of power for the community, and we intend to use that power.
AMY GOODMAN : José Espinoza, I want to end with you. As I said, you drove an hour and a half for this interview, and it&#8217;s your first time speaking, and you&#8217;re risking a lot. Why did you decide to do this?
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : I want to be an example for everybody like me, in a position to come out and not be afraid and use the resources that are available through organizations like United We Dream and others. Many of the—many friends I have, they are afraid to come out. They are afraid to say something. They&#8217;re afraid to show. They&#8217;re afraid or insecure, because of—they don&#8217;t have the resources. They don&#8217;t have the ways to help their families. And it&#8217;s just different. It&#8217;s just—
AMY GOODMAN : So, are you—
JOSÉ ESPINOZA : I just them to—I just want to give them an example and show them that, yes, we can do it, and there are people out there that can help us.
AMY GOODMAN : José, I want to thank you for being on with us, for your bravery. José Espinoza is an undocumented immigrant who had hoped to apply on Wednesday for consideration to stay in the United States under the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that&#8217;s part of President Obama&#8217;s executive order. He now cannot make that application, but we&#8217;ll continue to follow your case. I also want to thank Oscar Hernandez for joining us, who is a lead field organizer for the United We Dream in Houston, Texas, where he&#8217;s lived for more than 15 years. It&#8217;s an immigrant youth-led organization fighting for relief and fair treatment for all undocumented immigrants. I also want to thank our guest in Washington, D.C., Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, record cold strikes a third of the country. Maybe a hundred cities will post record lows today. At the same time, we&#8217;re seeing explosions at oil plants, derailment of oil bomb trains, as they&#8217;re called. What does this all mean? What can we do about it? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : &quot;The Browning of America&quot; by Olmeca. The video for their song was made in collaboration with Puente Vision and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman. AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to Oscar Hernandez and José Espinoza in Houston. Oscar, you were a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that Marielena was just talking about. This doesn’t affect you. But you are also a lead organizer for United We Dream in Houston. You organized for this executive order. Can you explain how you organized and what this judge’s decision means for you?

OSCARHERNANDEZ: Yes. So, for this executive action, we took a lot of measures. This has happened since way back in 2010, when the Senate failed us and the DREAM Act didn’t pass. So we were organizing to fight for some kind of administrative relief for our community. I was lucky to benefit in 2012, to be able to apply for deferred action. And it’s because of that that I’m able to help our community. Right now we still are servicing people. We’re helping people apply for deferred action. We have legal clinics throughout the year, and making sure that our community know what’s happening.

Like the attorney said before, we were expecting this. I mean, I live in Texas. We know the reality of what the demographic is like here. So we were expecting this to happen, and we’re more than prepared to inform our communities and not be afraid, to know that this is a temporary setback, but it’s only temporary. We will be able to continue our process, and, more than anything, to know that just because we’re here undocumented does not mean that we do not have value, and it does not mean that we won’t contribute.

So, through our program, what we want to do is make sure that our community feels empowered, is properly informed, and that we’re fighting for immigrant rights. And if you can benefit from DACA, we want to be able to service the community. This is only a delay. This is not a delay for United We Dream. We will continue to do the services we do. We will continue to inform our community. And those who can benefit from the first deferred action that came out in 2012, we’ll be able to help them. And those who may benefit from the 2014 deferred action expansion and deferred action for parents of American citizens and legal permanent residents, we’ll be offering services and information on that. So, this is not going to stop us.

AMYGOODMAN: José Espinoza, I want to first of all thank you for joining us. I know you drove an hour and a half to get to this interview, and it’s your first TV interview. You’re risking a lot to come out of the shadows and say you’re an undocumented immigrant. You were planning to apply this week?

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: Yes, I was.

AMYGOODMAN: And talk about your own story and why this was so important to you.

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: Well, it was so important for me, because it’s just not just me, it was also my family, because for the years, for so many years, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to become legal and be in this country and able to work. And it was for my family to finally be in—just for a better life here in the United States. I’m sorry.

AMYGOODMAN: So, in your time here in the United States, when did you come to the United States? Where have you been working?

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: I came to the United States as a kid when I was 14 years old, and I started working in different places. And right now, what I’ve been doing the most for the last 12 years is I’ve been working in the oil field industry. And I’ve been doing—I’ve been working for companies known worldwide, and this is—this is something that can benefit—that has been benefiting me and my family because of this.

AMYGOODMAN: So you’ve been married for 15 years? You came here when you were 14 years old. All three of your children are U.S. citizens?

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: Yes, ma’am, they are.

AMYGOODMAN: So you were too old to apply under DACA, as Oscar Hernandez did?

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: Yes. I didn’t have the age for that. And finally, when this new law came in place, I was very excited, and I was willing to get—to move out of the shadows, to come out. And through Oscar’s help and their organization, I was—finally, I saw the chance to do that. And actually, I had everything ready, but one day before, my dream came down.

AMYGOODMAN: Oscar Hernandez, what are you telling people like José to do right now? I mean, José came to your workshops, he got everything in order. What happens now?

OSCARHERNANDEZ: First of all, save your money. We want people to avoid fraud. We know that our community is very vulnerable, and we want to make sure that they get the services we deserve. Second of all, prepare documentation. Like I said before, this is something we expected, and we will continue to fight for immigrant rights. Deferred action was not given to us. This was something that was organized by undocumented immigrant youth in our community, and we were able to win this. And we will continue to prevail, and we will continue to fight for immigrant rights and make sure that we get the representation we deserve.

So anybody who’s out there who might potentially benefit this, who might think they benefit from this, go to our webpage. You can go to UnitedWeDream.org and get more information. And then you can also look up services near where you live, where they provide either free legal services or fees at a nominal fee.

If you’re preparing your documents right now, make sure you have everything in order. Look for people that you can trust in your community. But don’t be afraid. You know, we expected this to happen, and we expect to pass—we expect something to pass within the coming months or coming weeks. So, you know, right now we’re hoping that President Obama presses the Department of Justice for an appeal, to make sure that we move this as quickly as possible. But this is not the end of the road for us. We will continue to fight for immigrant rights, and we will continue to help people who may benefit from DACA and DAPA, and to help our immigrant community.

AMYGOODMAN: Oscar, it may not end just with this court decision. Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he’ll sign legislation to repeal the state’s DREAM Act if it comes before him. This is Governor Abbott.

GOV. GREGABBOTT: The way the law is written is that students who are applying for in-state tuition under that law must be making progress toward establishing legal status. And there is absolutely no rules or regulations or determinations to see whether or not they are fulfilling the law as is written. So, at a minimum, the law has to be fixed.

AMYGOODMAN: The Texas DREAM Act offers in-state tuition rates to children of undocumented immigrants. It actually went into effect under his predecessor, Governor Perry. Oscar Hernandez, your reaction to Governor Abbott? And as we wrap up, your parents, where, Oscar, are they? And where do they stand in all of this legislation and these executive actions?

OSCARHERNANDEZ: So it’s really good you bring that up, because the fact of the matter is that this executive action, this deferred action, it is not really a solution to the issue of undocumented immigrants here. It’s a step forward. It’s a step forward in the right direction. But, for example, my parents, who have been here all my life—they own houses, they own a business—they’re still undocumented. And based on the regulations from USCIS, they might not potentially benefit from the deferred action for parent of legal—parent of American citizens or legal permanent residents. So we know that this is not the final step for us. This is not the final step for our community.

And even when it comes to Greg Abbott’s comments, referring to the Texas in-state tuition that allows undocumented immigrants in Texas to get financial aid to go to university, we know that this is a tack—this is more playing politics with our community. And that, to me, is something I will not stand for. You know, people over politics, that’s one of the big things we tell people, that we will not let anybody play politics with our immigrant community, because that’s not—that’s not how I know this country is based on.

So, just like a battle that there might be going on right now for deferred action, there is one happening for in-state tuition, and this is something we are also involved in. If there’s any undocumented youth out there who might be graduating, who also might feel like they’re hopeless because they might think that they can’t get a job later on, they might think that they can’t go to school, we’re here to tell them that you can. We know people that have done this before. We know Texas has helped us, undocumented immigrants, apply to colleges and then get financial aid. And we will continue to fight for them, to make sure that other immigrants and other undocumented youth that are here can take advantage of these services. And we will continue to fight for parents, who might not benefit from deferred action, and our LGBTQ community, who sometime is neglected when it comes to this. So, no, there is a lot of power with undocumented immigrants, there is a lot of power for the community, and we intend to use that power.

AMYGOODMAN: José Espinoza, I want to end with you. As I said, you drove an hour and a half for this interview, and it’s your first time speaking, and you’re risking a lot. Why did you decide to do this?

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: I want to be an example for everybody like me, in a position to come out and not be afraid and use the resources that are available through organizations like United We Dream and others. Many of the—many friends I have, they are afraid to come out. They are afraid to say something. They’re afraid to show. They’re afraid or insecure, because of—they don’t have the resources. They don’t have the ways to help their families. And it’s just different. It’s just—

AMYGOODMAN: So, are you—

JOSÉ ESPINOZA: I just them to—I just want to give them an example and show them that, yes, we can do it, and there are people out there that can help us.

AMYGOODMAN: José, I want to thank you for being on with us, for your bravery. José Espinoza is an undocumented immigrant who had hoped to apply on Wednesday for consideration to stay in the United States under the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that’s part of President Obama’s executive order. He now cannot make that application, but we’ll continue to follow your case. I also want to thank Oscar Hernandez for joining us, who is a lead field organizer for the United We Dream in Houston, Texas, where he’s lived for more than 15 years. It’s an immigrant youth-led organization fighting for relief and fair treatment for all undocumented immigrants. I also want to thank our guest in Washington, D.C., Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, record cold strikes a third of the country. Maybe a hundred cities will post record lows today. At the same time, we’re seeing explosions at oil plants, derailment of oil bomb trains, as they’re called. What does this all mean? What can we do about it? Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: "The Browning of America" by Olmeca. The video for their song was made in collaboration with Puente Vision and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

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Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Undocumented Father Finds Sanctuary in Denver Church to Fight Deportation to Mexicohttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/13/undocumented_father_finds_sanctuary_in_denver
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-13:en/story/476f68 AMY GOODMAN : We are broadcasting from Denver, Colorado, from Denver Open Media. When I flew in to Denver yesterday, on Thursday, I went directly to the First Unitarian Society Church to meet Arturo Hernández García. He&#8217;s an undocumented immigrant and father of two girls. Since October, he has sought sanctuary at the church as he fights his deportation. I also met his nine-year-old daughter Andrea, who&#8217;s a United States citizen. Her status means he may be allowed to stay in the country under President Obama&#8217;s new deferred action program starting in May—if he&#8217;s not deported before then. Andrea was with her father when I went to interview him last night.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;ve just arrived at the Unitarian Church in Denver, and we&#8217;re coming to see Arturo Hernández García, who has taken refuge here. He&#8217;s taken sanctuary here, the first one to do this in Denver since the 1980s.
Hi, I&#8217;m Amy Goodman.
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Good to meet you.
AMY GOODMAN : Good to meet you.
Can you tell me how you ended up living in this church?
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: It is hard, because I have a long time in here. I have 115 days already.
AMY GOODMAN : Why did you come here?
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Because I am risk to deportation. October 21st, I have my final order for deportation. And the reason I&#8217;m coming here is because I want to fight my case.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you tell me what happened? How did you end up going into deportation proceedings? You had a tile business?
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah, I&#8217;m working on constructions, usually big constructions like apartments, 100, 200, 300 apartments, and hundreds of people working in there. And I had trouble with one person, and I have that discussion with him. And they called the police, and the police, they arrest me. And after that, immigration put—the hall, immigration hall.
AMY GOODMAN : So, what happened after that?
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: I&#8217;m be in detention center for immigration for 15 days. And I pay a bail bond. I am a good person. I am working hard here by 16 years in Colorado. I never be in trouble. I never be arrested. I never stay in jail before, here or in Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN : You had your two children here in the United States?
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: I have one daughter that is 15 years old. She was born in Mexico. And she&#8217;s in DACA . It&#8217;s the deferred action for students. She&#8217;s now get a—permits job for her. And I have Andrea, is nine years old. She&#8217;s a citizen.
AMY GOODMAN : So what has it been like for you? You&#8217;ve been here for many months now, for November, December—for four months.
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah, three months and a half already. It&#8217;s hard, hard for me and for my family, too. I want to come back in my life, normal life, and come back to work and still in home with my daughters and my wife.
AMY GOODMAN : So we&#8217;re here in the sanctuary with Arturo Hernández García, and his nine-year-old daughter Andrea has just joined us. Hi, Andrea.
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Hi.
AMY GOODMAN : Did you come here—do you come here after school?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : What grade are you in?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Fourth.
AMY GOODMAN : Fourth grade. How do you feel about your father living in the church?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Sad. I want him to go back home with us.
AMY GOODMAN : What are you hoping for your father?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: For him to go home and to give him a stay, for ICE to give him a stay.
AMY GOODMAN : For ICE to give him a stay. Did you also go to Washington, D.C., with your mother and your sister?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : What did you do there?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: We were at the—
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: With the officers, ICE officers.
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: —with the ICE officers and—
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Homeland Security.
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: —Homeland Security, and we were telling them that we wanted our dad to go home with us.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think it will happen?
ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re standing in the sanctuary, and behind you is a banner that says &quot;All souls are sacred and worthy. There is unity that makes us one.&quot; And we&#8217;re standing in front of the organ.
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: We come here, United States, to work and the future for the family. We are not criminal. It&#8217;s not true what the people, the government say on TV. So, I come here to, yeah, like I say, just to work and a better future for my kids. And I&#8217;m contributing for the stay. We work and pay taxes. And so, everything I do, I do for my family, so...
AMY GOODMAN : So, I want to thank you for taking this time to talk to us, Arturo, and your daughter Andrea. We&#8217;re here at the Unitarian Church in Denver, where Arturo Hernández García has taken sanctuary now for three-and-a-half months. I believe this is the first time someone has taken sanctuary in a church in Denver since the 1980s, during the sanctuary movement, people fleeing political persecution and violence in Latin America. Thank you.
ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Thank you. Thank you for coming, and thank you for interesting in my case. I appreciate it.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you tell me your name?
BETH CHRONISTER : My name is Beth Chronister, and I work here as the assistant minister at First Unitarian Society.
AMY GOODMAN : And what has it been like to give sanctuary to Arturo, first time sanctuary has been given in Denver since the 1980s?
BETH CHRONISTER : It&#8217;s really been a experience that has expanded the congregation. It has been an experience that has brought people together in a way to do justice. This congregation has a long history of being committed to justice, but I think, in walking with Arturo and his family through this experience, it&#8217;s been a—doing justice through companionship, in a way that we have learned so much.
AMY GOODMAN : What was the decision you went through to do this?
BETH CHRONISTER : So the process was actually about a six-month-long process. And there wasn&#8217;t instant agreement in the congregation, but it was a long process of dialogue, speaking from the pulpit, of doing small group work, and educating ourselves about immigration to figure out what was the way that we felt, as a community, that we could best affect the situation, which all ended in a big congregational vote, which was overwhelmingly positive.
AMY GOODMAN : How many?
BETH CHRONISTER : Oh, my goodness, I think was about a 90 percent yes.
AMY GOODMAN : And how many people in the congregation?
BETH CHRONISTER : Oh, how many people in the congregation? We have a congregation of about 370.
AMY GOODMAN : Can&#8217;t ICE just walk in and arrest him?
BETH CHRONISTER : So, the history with sanctuary and respecting sanctuary in churches is that they don&#8217;t, that they—it would just look so bad, that they probably wouldn&#8217;t. I think that there&#8217;s the same sort of respect for schools and hospitals that they have for churches.
AMY GOODMAN : And how long do you think this will go on for?
BETH CHRONISTER : Oh, my goodness. We are hoping that Arturo and Ana and his children are able to get—to all be reunited as soon as possible, hopefully in this next week. But we&#8217;ve been hoping for this next week for quite some time. But we&#8217;re in it as a community of commitment around him.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, thanks so much.
BETH CHRONISTER : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Beth Chronister. She is assistant minister at the First Unitarian Church here in Denver, Colorado, where Arturo García Hernández has taken sanctuary as he seeks to stay in the United States with his wife and his two daughters. I was with him last night here in Denver. Special thanks to Denis Moynihan for helping to film our interview.
Well, we&#8217;re joined right now by Jennifer Piper. She helped Arturo Hernández García enter sanctuary. She coordinates the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition, is an interfaith organizer for American Friends Service Committee.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Very quickly, explain the circumstances under which Arturo ended up at this church.
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah, the circumstances are actually really common and represent a lot of people in the community, because of the strong link between police and sheriffs and immigration in our country. So, he was laying tile at a job site. Another—
AMY GOODMAN : He runs a tile-laying company with his brother here in Denver.
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah, and they employ six people. And so, they were—it was a huge job site, and they were laying tile, and a guy wanted to hang windows. And that gentleman didn&#8217;t like that they refused him entry into the work area, because—
AMY GOODMAN : Because they didn&#8217;t want him to walk on the tile that they just laid.
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah, it was not safe for him. It would ruin the tile. It would waste money and time. And they had it roped off. And the gentleman was white, and he started yelling racial slurs at Arturo and his crew. And they said, &quot;Well, you need to talk to the supervisor. If the supervisor says you can come in the area, we&#8217;ll let you.&quot; The supervisor, of course, said he couldn&#8217;t. He said he wasn&#8217;t going to take orders from any Mexicans. He went right up into Arturo&#8217;s face, and Arturo gently pushed him away, because he thought he was going to hit Arturo. The guy went off and left, called the police, accused Arturo of threatening him. Everyone on the scene, including the supervisors, general contractors, testified in court that Arturo did not instigate the argument and that he didn&#8217;t threaten this guy in any way. And he was—Arturo was found not guilty by a jury of 12 people.
And despite that, immigration continued deportation proceedings against him. That was almost five years ago now. And so, he has exhausted every legal avenue open to him in fighting his case and been denied discretion over and over again. So, now things have changed a little bit in the legal argument in his case because of the deferred action program that President Obama announced in November.
AMY GOODMAN : Why would he become eligible under it?
JENNIFER PIPER : So, he has a U.S. citizen daughter. He&#8217;s been here more than 10 years—well, he&#8217;s been here more than the five years that&#8217;s required by the program. He has no criminal record. He&#8217;s paid taxes. He meets all the requirements. The only issue is he has a deportation order that was issued last year, and that means that we&#8217;ll have to ask the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant him discretion and allow him to qualify. But otherwise, he completely qualifies.
AMY GOODMAN : Quite something, this church has become a sanctuary church for a new wave of sanctuary from the &#8217;80s.
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk, in this last minute that we have, how this story of Arturo fits into the national picture and what&#8217;s happening around immigration rights?
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah, well, we really see our immigrants organizing and finding ways to further resist a system that is widespread throughout our country. We spend $18 billion a year on immigration enforcement, which is more than all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined. And as long as we keep spending that amount of money on immigration enforcement, we&#8217;ll see families like Arturo&#8217;s being separated. We&#8217;ll see people like Arturo being deported, because we have this immense amount of resources that we&#8217;re putting into deportation. And we have to ask: Is that really the priority of our country? Because that&#8217;s what the spending priority is right now. And as long as we see that and we see continued links between police and immigration, we&#8217;ll continue to see key members of our communities deported. And so, what we also see are allied communities who realize they know people who are undocumented, who are in deportation, stepping up to accompany and experience a little bit of the risk that people like Arturo are living every day.
AMY GOODMAN : And this sanctuary movement, is it growing?
JENNIFER PIPER : The amount of churches who have committed to sanctuary is growing. The number of people actually taking sanctuary isn&#8217;t. And some of that is because of this new program and some new opportunities for people that attempt to stay in the country legally. But even if they implement that fully, it will only cover five million of the 10 million or so people who are here.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Jennifer Piper, we will continue to follow Arturo&#8217;s case. You know, it&#8217;s interesting, Jessie Hernandez and Arturo Hernández García, they&#8217;re not related—
JENNIFER PIPER : No.
AMY GOODMAN : —but their stories have intersected with their daughters.
JENNIFER PIPER : Yeah, Arturo&#8217;s oldest daughter, Mariana, actually went to school with Jessie, and his family has been very impacted by the violence of the Denver Police Department and the way that there&#8217;s no accountability. And I think that the lack of accountability with the Denver Police Department is the same lack of accountability we see in the immigration enforcement system.
AMY GOODMAN : Jennifer Piper is interfaith organizer for American Friends Service Committee here in Denver, coordinating the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. She helped Arturo Hernández García enter sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church in Denver.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, journalist David Sirota. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: We are broadcasting from Denver, Colorado, from Denver Open Media. When I flew in to Denver yesterday, on Thursday, I went directly to the First Unitarian Society Church to meet Arturo Hernández García. He’s an undocumented immigrant and father of two girls. Since October, he has sought sanctuary at the church as he fights his deportation. I also met his nine-year-old daughter Andrea, who’s a United States citizen. Her status means he may be allowed to stay in the country under President Obama’s new deferred action program starting in May—if he’s not deported before then. Andrea was with her father when I went to interview him last night.

AMYGOODMAN: We’ve just arrived at the Unitarian Church in Denver, and we’re coming to see Arturo Hernández García, who has taken refuge here. He’s taken sanctuary here, the first one to do this in Denver since the 1980s.

Hi, I’m Amy Goodman.

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Good to meet you.

AMYGOODMAN: Good to meet you.

Can you tell me how you ended up living in this church?

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: It is hard, because I have a long time in here. I have 115 days already.

AMYGOODMAN: Why did you come here?

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Because I am risk to deportation. October 21st, I have my final order for deportation. And the reason I’m coming here is because I want to fight my case.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you tell me what happened? How did you end up going into deportation proceedings? You had a tile business?

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah, I’m working on constructions, usually big constructions like apartments, 100, 200, 300 apartments, and hundreds of people working in there. And I had trouble with one person, and I have that discussion with him. And they called the police, and the police, they arrest me. And after that, immigration put—the hall, immigration hall.

AMYGOODMAN: So, what happened after that?

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: I’m be in detention center for immigration for 15 days. And I pay a bail bond. I am a good person. I am working hard here by 16 years in Colorado. I never be in trouble. I never be arrested. I never stay in jail before, here or in Mexico.

AMYGOODMAN: You had your two children here in the United States?

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: I have one daughter that is 15 years old. She was born in Mexico. And she’s in DACA. It’s the deferred action for students. She’s now get a—permits job for her. And I have Andrea, is nine years old. She’s a citizen.

AMYGOODMAN: So what has it been like for you? You’ve been here for many months now, for November, December—for four months.

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah, three months and a half already. It’s hard, hard for me and for my family, too. I want to come back in my life, normal life, and come back to work and still in home with my daughters and my wife.

AMYGOODMAN: So we’re here in the sanctuary with Arturo Hernández García, and his nine-year-old daughter Andrea has just joined us. Hi, Andrea.

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Hi.

AMYGOODMAN: Did you come here—do you come here after school?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: What grade are you in?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Fourth.

AMYGOODMAN: Fourth grade. How do you feel about your father living in the church?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Sad. I want him to go back home with us.

AMYGOODMAN: What are you hoping for your father?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: For him to go home and to give him a stay, for ICE to give him a stay.

AMYGOODMAN: For ICE to give him a stay. Did you also go to Washington, D.C., with your mother and your sister?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: What did you do there?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: We were at the—

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: With the officers, ICE officers.

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: —with the ICE officers and—

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Homeland Security.

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: —Homeland Security, and we were telling them that we wanted our dad to go home with us.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think it will happen?

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re standing in the sanctuary, and behind you is a banner that says "All souls are sacred and worthy. There is unity that makes us one." And we’re standing in front of the organ.

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: We come here, United States, to work and the future for the family. We are not criminal. It’s not true what the people, the government say on TV. So, I come here to, yeah, like I say, just to work and a better future for my kids. And I’m contributing for the stay. We work and pay taxes. And so, everything I do, I do for my family, so...

AMYGOODMAN: So, I want to thank you for taking this time to talk to us, Arturo, and your daughter Andrea. We’re here at the Unitarian Church in Denver, where Arturo Hernández García has taken sanctuary now for three-and-a-half months. I believe this is the first time someone has taken sanctuary in a church in Denver since the 1980s, during the sanctuary movement, people fleeing political persecution and violence in Latin America. Thank you.

ARTURO HERNÁNDEZ GARCÍA: Thank you. Thank you for coming, and thank you for interesting in my case. I appreciate it.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you tell me your name?

BETHCHRONISTER: My name is Beth Chronister, and I work here as the assistant minister at First Unitarian Society.

AMYGOODMAN: And what has it been like to give sanctuary to Arturo, first time sanctuary has been given in Denver since the 1980s?

BETHCHRONISTER: It’s really been a experience that has expanded the congregation. It has been an experience that has brought people together in a way to do justice. This congregation has a long history of being committed to justice, but I think, in walking with Arturo and his family through this experience, it’s been a—doing justice through companionship, in a way that we have learned so much.

AMYGOODMAN: What was the decision you went through to do this?

BETHCHRONISTER: So the process was actually about a six-month-long process. And there wasn’t instant agreement in the congregation, but it was a long process of dialogue, speaking from the pulpit, of doing small group work, and educating ourselves about immigration to figure out what was the way that we felt, as a community, that we could best affect the situation, which all ended in a big congregational vote, which was overwhelmingly positive.

AMYGOODMAN: How many?

BETHCHRONISTER: Oh, my goodness, I think was about a 90 percent yes.

AMYGOODMAN: And how many people in the congregation?

BETHCHRONISTER: Oh, how many people in the congregation? We have a congregation of about 370.

AMYGOODMAN: Can’t ICE just walk in and arrest him?

BETHCHRONISTER: So, the history with sanctuary and respecting sanctuary in churches is that they don’t, that they—it would just look so bad, that they probably wouldn’t. I think that there’s the same sort of respect for schools and hospitals that they have for churches.

AMYGOODMAN: And how long do you think this will go on for?

BETHCHRONISTER: Oh, my goodness. We are hoping that Arturo and Ana and his children are able to get—to all be reunited as soon as possible, hopefully in this next week. But we’ve been hoping for this next week for quite some time. But we’re in it as a community of commitment around him.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, thanks so much.

BETHCHRONISTER: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Beth Chronister. She is assistant minister at the First Unitarian Church here in Denver, Colorado, where Arturo García Hernández has taken sanctuary as he seeks to stay in the United States with his wife and his two daughters. I was with him last night here in Denver. Special thanks to Denis Moynihan for helping to film our interview.

Well, we’re joined right now by Jennifer Piper. She helped Arturo Hernández García enter sanctuary. She coordinates the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition, is an interfaith organizer for American Friends Service Committee.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Very quickly, explain the circumstances under which Arturo ended up at this church.

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah, the circumstances are actually really common and represent a lot of people in the community, because of the strong link between police and sheriffs and immigration in our country. So, he was laying tile at a job site. Another—

AMYGOODMAN: He runs a tile-laying company with his brother here in Denver.

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah, and they employ six people. And so, they were—it was a huge job site, and they were laying tile, and a guy wanted to hang windows. And that gentleman didn’t like that they refused him entry into the work area, because—

AMYGOODMAN: Because they didn’t want him to walk on the tile that they just laid.

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah, it was not safe for him. It would ruin the tile. It would waste money and time. And they had it roped off. And the gentleman was white, and he started yelling racial slurs at Arturo and his crew. And they said, "Well, you need to talk to the supervisor. If the supervisor says you can come in the area, we’ll let you." The supervisor, of course, said he couldn’t. He said he wasn’t going to take orders from any Mexicans. He went right up into Arturo’s face, and Arturo gently pushed him away, because he thought he was going to hit Arturo. The guy went off and left, called the police, accused Arturo of threatening him. Everyone on the scene, including the supervisors, general contractors, testified in court that Arturo did not instigate the argument and that he didn’t threaten this guy in any way. And he was—Arturo was found not guilty by a jury of 12 people.

And despite that, immigration continued deportation proceedings against him. That was almost five years ago now. And so, he has exhausted every legal avenue open to him in fighting his case and been denied discretion over and over again. So, now things have changed a little bit in the legal argument in his case because of the deferred action program that President Obama announced in November.

AMYGOODMAN: Why would he become eligible under it?

JENNIFERPIPER: So, he has a U.S. citizen daughter. He’s been here more than 10 years—well, he’s been here more than the five years that’s required by the program. He has no criminal record. He’s paid taxes. He meets all the requirements. The only issue is he has a deportation order that was issued last year, and that means that we’ll have to ask the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant him discretion and allow him to qualify. But otherwise, he completely qualifies.

AMYGOODMAN: Quite something, this church has become a sanctuary church for a new wave of sanctuary from the ’80s.

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk, in this last minute that we have, how this story of Arturo fits into the national picture and what’s happening around immigration rights?

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah, well, we really see our immigrants organizing and finding ways to further resist a system that is widespread throughout our country. We spend $18 billion a year on immigration enforcement, which is more than all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined. And as long as we keep spending that amount of money on immigration enforcement, we’ll see families like Arturo’s being separated. We’ll see people like Arturo being deported, because we have this immense amount of resources that we’re putting into deportation. And we have to ask: Is that really the priority of our country? Because that’s what the spending priority is right now. And as long as we see that and we see continued links between police and immigration, we’ll continue to see key members of our communities deported. And so, what we also see are allied communities who realize they know people who are undocumented, who are in deportation, stepping up to accompany and experience a little bit of the risk that people like Arturo are living every day.

AMYGOODMAN: And this sanctuary movement, is it growing?

JENNIFERPIPER: The amount of churches who have committed to sanctuary is growing. The number of people actually taking sanctuary isn’t. And some of that is because of this new program and some new opportunities for people that attempt to stay in the country legally. But even if they implement that fully, it will only cover five million of the 10 million or so people who are here.

JENNIFERPIPER: Yeah, Arturo’s oldest daughter, Mariana, actually went to school with Jessie, and his family has been very impacted by the violence of the Denver Police Department and the way that there’s no accountability. And I think that the lack of accountability with the Denver Police Department is the same lack of accountability we see in the immigration enforcement system.

AMYGOODMAN: Jennifer Piper is interfaith organizer for American Friends Service Committee here in Denver, coordinating the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. She helped Arturo Hernández García enter sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church in Denver.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, journalist David Sirota. Stay with us.

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Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500"Guantánamo of the Pacific": Australian Asylum Seekers Wage Hunger Strike at Offshore Detention Sitehttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/22/guantanamo_of_the_pacific_australian_asylum
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-22:en/story/73c075 NERMEEN SHAIKH : A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling &quot;the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific.&quot; The Manus Island detention center is paid for by the Australian government and run by an Australian contractor, Transfield Services, but located offshore on Papua New Guinea&#8217;s soil. The inmates are not accused of any crimes; they are asylum seekers from war-ravaged countries who are waiting indefinitely for their refugee status determinations.
Eighty detainees recently signed a letter to the Australian government, saying, in part, quote, &quot;Here a disaster is about to happen, please prevent this disaster.&quot; They are asking the United Nations to intervene against the Australian federal government&#8217;s plan to resettle them in Papua New Guinea, where they say they could face persecution. Some have barricaded themselves behind the detention center&#8217;s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures, such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement.
AMY GOODMAN : For more, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. Alex Kelly, a social justice filmmaker, on Wednesday she organized a protest outside the Australian Consulate here in New York City. And Jennifer Robinson is with us, an Australian human rights lawyer, director of legal advocacy for the Bertha Foundation, also co-founder of International Lawyers for West Papua.
Alex and Jennifer, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Jennifer, explain why you were outside the Australian Consulate last night and what&#8217;s going on, for what many in the United States may never have heard of, at Manus Island.
JENNIFER ROBINSON : Well, the description that this is the Pacific&#8217;s Guantánamo is apt. As an Australian, I feel a moral obligation to stand up and say, &quot;Not in my name.&quot; The Australian government is indefinitely detaining asylum seekers, sending them to conditions that the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in breach of our international obligations. Consecutive Australian governments on both sides of the political divide have continued this practice. And it&#8217;s time that Australians stand up and say, &quot;Enough. This is enough.&quot;
NERMEEN SHAIKH : But could you explain, what is the status of Manus Island? Why are they—why does Australia keep potential asylum seekers in detention there?
JENNIFER ROBINSON : Australia intercepts people arriving by boat seeking asylum in Australia. They are insisting on their international right to seek asylum. Australia is concerned about the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia, and is therefore intercepting them, sending them to PNG for process and resettlement there so they&#8217;ll never get to Australia. This is in clear breach of our international obligations.
AMY GOODMAN : Alex, explain who these asylum seekers are, how many are packed into this prison, and what&#8217;s the response in Australia.
ALEX KELLY : There&#8217;s over a thousand people currently being detained at the Manus Island detention center. We&#8217;ve got people there from Syria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia. And these people have been in there—some people have been in there for up to 18 months. It&#8217;s indefinite detention. They don&#8217;t know when they&#8217;re going to be processed. In fact, there&#8217;s been no one that&#8217;s been processed and resettled.
So this latest protest is in response to the idea that they&#8217;re going to be resettled in Papua New Guinea. Among some of the detainees, we know that there are people who are homosexual, who have actually fled their home countries because of persecution, and now they&#8217;re very frightened of being resettled in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal. There&#8217;s been huge conflicts between PNG locals and detainees. And we&#8217;re just seeing that it&#8217;s been ongoing violence, a huge number of incidents of self-harm, hunger-striking—
AMY GOODMAN : How long are people held?
ALEX KELLY : It&#8217;s indefinite. In some detention centers in Australia—we have some other offshore and onshore detention centers—there&#8217;s people who have been in there for up to four years.
AMY GOODMAN : And evidence of the hunger strike going on?
ALEX KELLY : The hunger strike is still continuing. The Australian government is saying that the hunger strike is over, but we&#8217;ve been seeing images today, and I&#8217;ve had messages from advocates and people inside today saying it&#8217;s continuing within the compounds.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Alex, you mentioned the conflict between the locals, PNG locals, and the detainees. Could you explain what happened? There have been two detainees who have been killed or who died within that detention facility at Manus Island. What happened to Reza Berati, his name is?
ALEX KELLY : Yes. There&#8217;s been ongoing tensions since the detention center was established. Manus Island, a lot of the community there are living in poverty. And it appears that there&#8217;s been a lot of incitement over tensions from people operating the center, so spreading rumors within and without about the tensions. But last February, there was a tragic incident where there was—guards attacked detainees, and there was one detainee who died. We still haven&#8217;t actually seen any prosecutions in response to the death of Reza Berati. There&#8217;s been two people arrested, but there&#8217;s allegations that Australians were involved.
AMY GOODMAN : Jennifer Robinson, you&#8217;re an international human rights attorney. What&#8217;s the law here? You&#8217;ve been to PNG . You&#8217;ve been to this area.
JENNIFER ROBINSON : I&#8217;ve been to PNG , and I&#8217;ve spent times in West Papuan refugee settlement camps, so I can speak with first-hand experience that PNG is not a state that is capable of accepting our asylum seekers and refugees. Ninety percent of these people who come by boat to Australia have been determined to be refugees in the past. The conditions in PNG are terrible. Australia is—it is unlawful for Australia to be continuing to send asylum seekers to conditions the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman, degrading treatment. We are in breach of our international obligations.
The problem is enforcement. Australia&#8217;s domestic law—the High Court of Australia has continually found that offshore detention is permitted under the terms of Australian law. When we had the Malaysian Solution under the Gillard government, it was challenged before the High Court and found to be inappropriate, because we had a provision in our law that you couldn&#8217;t send asylum seekers to a country that didn&#8217;t meet certain human rights standards. In response to that, the Australian government amended that to remove that from our domestic law, which means we are no longer constrained, and they upheld the constitutionality of offshore processing. This is a clear breach of our international obligations, but what we can do as a matter of law within Australia&#8217;s courts is limited.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Very quickly, Jennifer, what are the implications of the fact that this detention facility is run by an Australian company or private contractor?
AMY GOODMAN : You have five seconds.
JENNIFER ROBINSON : Australia is clearly liable, as is its corporation, for the human rights obligations taking place.
AMY GOODMAN : Jennifer Robinson and Alex Kelly, thank you so much. NERMEENSHAIKH: A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling "the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific." The Manus Island detention center is paid for by the Australian government and run by an Australian contractor, Transfield Services, but located offshore on Papua New Guinea’s soil. The inmates are not accused of any crimes; they are asylum seekers from war-ravaged countries who are waiting indefinitely for their refugee status determinations.

Eighty detainees recently signed a letter to the Australian government, saying, in part, quote, "Here a disaster is about to happen, please prevent this disaster." They are asking the United Nations to intervene against the Australian federal government’s plan to resettle them in Papua New Guinea, where they say they could face persecution. Some have barricaded themselves behind the detention center’s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures, such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement.

AMYGOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Alex Kelly, a social justice filmmaker, on Wednesday she organized a protest outside the Australian Consulate here in New York City. And Jennifer Robinson is with us, an Australian human rights lawyer, director of legal advocacy for the Bertha Foundation, also co-founder of International Lawyers for West Papua.

Alex and Jennifer, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Jennifer, explain why you were outside the Australian Consulate last night and what’s going on, for what many in the United States may never have heard of, at Manus Island.

JENNIFERROBINSON: Well, the description that this is the Pacific’s Guantánamo is apt. As an Australian, I feel a moral obligation to stand up and say, "Not in my name." The Australian government is indefinitely detaining asylum seekers, sending them to conditions that the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in breach of our international obligations. Consecutive Australian governments on both sides of the political divide have continued this practice. And it’s time that Australians stand up and say, "Enough. This is enough."

NERMEENSHAIKH: But could you explain, what is the status of Manus Island? Why are they—why does Australia keep potential asylum seekers in detention there?

JENNIFERROBINSON: Australia intercepts people arriving by boat seeking asylum in Australia. They are insisting on their international right to seek asylum. Australia is concerned about the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia, and is therefore intercepting them, sending them to PNG for process and resettlement there so they’ll never get to Australia. This is in clear breach of our international obligations.

AMYGOODMAN: Alex, explain who these asylum seekers are, how many are packed into this prison, and what’s the response in Australia.

ALEXKELLY: There’s over a thousand people currently being detained at the Manus Island detention center. We’ve got people there from Syria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia. And these people have been in there—some people have been in there for up to 18 months. It’s indefinite detention. They don’t know when they’re going to be processed. In fact, there’s been no one that’s been processed and resettled.

So this latest protest is in response to the idea that they’re going to be resettled in Papua New Guinea. Among some of the detainees, we know that there are people who are homosexual, who have actually fled their home countries because of persecution, and now they’re very frightened of being resettled in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal. There’s been huge conflicts between PNG locals and detainees. And we’re just seeing that it’s been ongoing violence, a huge number of incidents of self-harm, hunger-striking—

AMYGOODMAN: How long are people held?

ALEXKELLY: It’s indefinite. In some detention centers in Australia—we have some other offshore and onshore detention centers—there’s people who have been in there for up to four years.

AMYGOODMAN: And evidence of the hunger strike going on?

ALEXKELLY: The hunger strike is still continuing. The Australian government is saying that the hunger strike is over, but we’ve been seeing images today, and I’ve had messages from advocates and people inside today saying it’s continuing within the compounds.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Alex, you mentioned the conflict between the locals, PNG locals, and the detainees. Could you explain what happened? There have been two detainees who have been killed or who died within that detention facility at Manus Island. What happened to Reza Berati, his name is?

ALEXKELLY: Yes. There’s been ongoing tensions since the detention center was established. Manus Island, a lot of the community there are living in poverty. And it appears that there’s been a lot of incitement over tensions from people operating the center, so spreading rumors within and without about the tensions. But last February, there was a tragic incident where there was—guards attacked detainees, and there was one detainee who died. We still haven’t actually seen any prosecutions in response to the death of Reza Berati. There’s been two people arrested, but there’s allegations that Australians were involved.

AMYGOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson, you’re an international human rights attorney. What’s the law here? You’ve been to PNG. You’ve been to this area.

JENNIFERROBINSON: I’ve been to PNG, and I’ve spent times in West Papuan refugee settlement camps, so I can speak with first-hand experience that PNG is not a state that is capable of accepting our asylum seekers and refugees. Ninety percent of these people who come by boat to Australia have been determined to be refugees in the past. The conditions in PNG are terrible. Australia is—it is unlawful for Australia to be continuing to send asylum seekers to conditions the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman, degrading treatment. We are in breach of our international obligations.

The problem is enforcement. Australia’s domestic law—the High Court of Australia has continually found that offshore detention is permitted under the terms of Australian law. When we had the Malaysian Solution under the Gillard government, it was challenged before the High Court and found to be inappropriate, because we had a provision in our law that you couldn’t send asylum seekers to a country that didn’t meet certain human rights standards. In response to that, the Australian government amended that to remove that from our domestic law, which means we are no longer constrained, and they upheld the constitutionality of offshore processing. This is a clear breach of our international obligations, but what we can do as a matter of law within Australia’s courts is limited.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Very quickly, Jennifer, what are the implications of the fact that this detention facility is run by an Australian company or private contractor?

AMYGOODMAN: You have five seconds.

JENNIFERROBINSON: Australia is clearly liable, as is its corporation, for the human rights obligations taking place.

AMYGOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson and Alex Kelly, thank you so much.

]]>
Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500Obama's Action Marks Historic Victory for Immigrant Rights, But Activists Warn of a Long Way to Gohttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/21/obamas_action_marks_historic_victory_for
tag:democracynow.org,2014-11-21:en/story/2c110d JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a prime-time speech Thursday night, President Obama outlined his plan to take executive action to grant temporary legal status to up to five million undocumented immigrants, protecting them from deportation.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like or what our last names are or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal: that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.
AMY GOODMAN : Under the plan, undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents will be allowed to temporarily remain in the country and work legally if they&#8217;ve lived in the United States for at least five years and pass a background check. But the new plan will not provide relief to the parents of undocumented children, even those who qualified for deferred action in 2012. Immigrant rights groups held gatherings across the country last night to watch the president&#8217;s speech.
Juan, you were at one of those gatherings in Queens. Where were you? Who was there?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, in Jackson Heights on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, Make the Road New York, a very influential immigrant rights group, a grassroots organization here in this city, held a viewing party. The place was jammed, over 200 people crowding every single room with about a half dozen television sets. But to me, the most important part of it was not just the president&#8217;s speech, but the people giving testimony beforehand, talking in really emotional terms about the deportations that had torn apart families, the struggles that they had had coming to this country, being here 15, 20, 25 years without any kind of legal status. It was really an emotional night as they prepared to hear the president give his presentation.
And, of course, this—we&#8217;ve got to take this in context. It was nine years ago next month when the infamous Sensenbrenner bill was passed in the House of Representatives that would make it a felony for you to be in the country illegally or for anyone to assist an undocumented immigrant. And that is really what touched off this modern human rights movement, that we know as the immigrant rights movement, in a massive way, because by that spring millions of people had poured into the streets of all the major cities in the country. And everything that&#8217;s gone on since then has been a reaction to this whole new grassroots human rights movement of the immigrant community in the United States.
So this was a historic moment here, a culmination of that, although it&#8217;s—as everyone said in the speeches last night, there&#8217;s a long way yet to go, because this temporary resolution is just that, a temporary resolution. And in fact, it will be six months before any of the parents of undocumented immigrants can actually apply for legal status. And so that the Republicans in Congress, a new Republican majority has basically a six-month window, as Congressman Luis Gutiérrez said, to finally do something, rather than just complain and whine about what the president has done now.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, let&#8217;s go back to President Obama&#8217;s speech Thursday night.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : Now, here&#8217;s the thing. We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we&#8217;re going to offer the following deal. If you have been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you&#8217;re willing to pay your fair share of taxes, you&#8217;ll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s President Obama last night in this historic address. I want to bring into this conversation two guests from Seattle, Washington, a mother and her daughter. Maru Mora Villalpando is an activist and undocumented Immigrant with the group Latino Advocacy. And we&#8217;re joined by her daughter, Josefina Mora. She is a U.S. citizen.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Because Josefina is a U.S. citizen, that means that you, too, will become a U.S. citizen—is that right—under President Obama&#8217;s plans?
MARU MORA VILLALPANDO : Good morning. Well, under this plan, I only get to be here for three years without being deported, and I could apply for a work permit. But that doesn&#8217;t put me in the path to legal permanent residence and then the path to citizenship. This is just a temporary relief. This is not permanent. It&#8217;s not really immigration status whatsoever. It&#8217;s very similar to what was granted to the childhood arrivals, the famous DACA .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you hear that already some of the Republicans in Congress are threatening to go to court, and some Republican governors are saying they will fight in their local states against providing work permits or providing driver&#8217;s licenses under the president&#8217;s executive order, what&#8217;s your response?
MARU MORA VILLALPANDO : Well, it&#8217;s not surprising. I think that Republicans have been really good at showing that they&#8217;re anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-poor, anti-children. So when we fought for this incredible victory of ours, when we decided to shut down ICE , to put ourselves at risk of arrest and deportation, when the hunger strikers decided to call the attention of the world the detention center in Tacoma by putting themselves on risk, and their lives and their health, we knew that our target was the president, Obama, and we knew we were right. Obviously, we knew that whatever he does will be challenged by the Republicans, because that&#8217;s all they&#8217;ve been doing throughout all these years is challenging all his work.
So, what we are going to do is to continue fighting, not only to keep what we have right now—which is very little, but it&#8217;s a step—but also to expand it, to make sure that others are included, because the Not One More campaign, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about, is to stop all deportations. And most importantly is to make it permanent, not only a three-year program that will be renewed, but who knows what will happen if another president comes in? We cannot be relying anymore on politics and allow politicians to use us anymore as their political ball to play with.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Josefina Mora, one of the things that the president mentioned is that he plans to eliminate the Secure Communities program and replace it with a new program that would target much more those undocumented immigrants who are felons. Could you talk about how Secure Communities has affected the many Latino communities across the country?
JOSEFINA MORA : Yeah, so, Secure Communities has really implemented more dividing families, not only because it allows local enforcement to work with ICE , but also because even if these people don&#8217;t have—aren&#8217;t charged with anything, they&#8217;re going to be—they have an ICE holder on them, and they can at any time be taken by ICE . So, many of the cases that we&#8217;ve worked with, many of the people that I know, have been affected by Secure Communities. And that&#8217;s actually, I think, the biggest thing that has leaded to detention, is Secure Communities.
And although he, Obama, announced that he was going to end it, he said that he was going to ramp up more enforcement for those who do not qualify for this. So that puts people who do not qualify for this in even more danger than they were before. And, you know, really, that&#8217;s—although he&#8217;s granting temporary relief, he&#8217;s still making it a little bit worse for people who will not qualify. And although I&#8217;m lucky that my mom qualifies for this, I&#8217;m worried for people like me who actually are not citizens, my counterparts, who will be even in more fear than I am right now for my mom. They will be in more fear for their parents in the future.
AMY GOODMAN : Josefina, how old are you?
JOSEFINA MORA : I&#8217;m 17.
AMY GOODMAN : You know, I think your view is reflected by the satirical newspaper The Onion . It&#8217;s headline captured many critics&#8217; disappointment, saying, &quot;5 Million Illegal Immigrants to Realize Dreams of Having Deportation Deferred.&quot; Republicans, though, say President Obama has overstepped his constitutional power by acting on his own. This is House Speaker John Boehner.
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER : Instead of working together to fix our broken immigration system, the president says he&#8217;s acting on his own. That&#8217;s just not how our democracy works. The president has said before that he&#8217;s not king and he&#8217;s not an emperor. But he&#8217;s sure acting like one. And he&#8217;s doing it at a time when the American people want nothing more than for us to work together.
AMY GOODMAN : So, we&#8217;re going to go back to our guests right now in Seattle, in Seattle, Washington. How are you, Josefina, going to organize? And, Maru Mora Villalpando, how will you be organizing at this point, because this is a period where decisions will be made as the Senate becomes Republican?
JOSEFINA MORA : Well, you know, I have always organized with my mom. I kind of have followed her wherever I&#8217;ve gone—wherever she&#8217;s gone, since I was about three years old. So, whatever she does, I will support her, and I will follow her, and I will do whatever I can in my school and in my community for people my age who do not—are not informed about the issue to really get involved and to really use, especially my white friends, to use their white privilege and their power to really influence decisions that are made in the future. And I hope to even in the future run for political office so that I can help in some small way to change this broken system, even though it&#8217;s changing, but very, very, very, very slowly. So, hopefully in the future, I&#8217;ll be able to help change that.
AMY GOODMAN : It&#8217;s interesting that President Obama is flying right now to Nevada. IN Nevada, it&#8217;s something like 17, 18 percent of kids have at least one parent who is undocumented, and I think in the state something like 8 percent of the whole population is undocumented. That&#8217;s where he will be making his announcement again, following two years ago where he was in Las Vegas, as well. Maru Mora Villalpando, your response?
MARU MORA VILLALPANDO : Yeah, absolutely. I think that he is trying to sell this. And that&#8217;s the way he sounded last night: very apologetic. I think he just played with the rhetoric that the Republicans have used all this time.
For us, when reading the details of his action, of his executive action, it shows that now more than ever he made it really easy for us to know how we&#8217;re going to organize. We&#8217;re going to organize those that are left behind. We&#8217;re going to organize those that are going to be drafted into the military because there will be no route for them into any status. We&#8217;re going to work with those that will be targeted by this different program, just with a different name, but it&#8217;s really the same program—the PEP instead of the Secure Communities program. We&#8217;re going to work with border communities, including here in Washington state, that will see even more militarized border. We will continue working in addressing—pushing for the addressing of the roots of migration and the political stand and economic stand that the U.S. has portrayed throughout our countries that has really been the one that pushed us to this point of having to migrate. So, for us, the work at the detention center will continue more than ever, because it&#8217;s really—it&#8217;s really sad that those that organized the hunger strike, that those that put themselves on the line inside, are not going to benefit from this executive action. So, really, for us, the work just begun.
AMY GOODMAN : Maru Mora Villalpando, I want to thank you for being with us. And, you know, we last talked to you when you were protesting the immigration detention center in Washington. In Texas, a new 2,400-bed family detention center is set to open this December in Dilley, Texas. Josefina Mora, we also want to thank you for being with us. Again, Josefina is 17. She&#8217;s a U.S. citizen, so her mother, Maru Mora Villalpando, will qualify for the—under the executive order. This is Democracy Now! We&#8217;re going to continue on the issue of immigration and also the mass protests that are taking place in Mexico. We&#8217;ll talk to a leader of the New Sanctuary Movement. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Triste Bufon, &quot;Canción de Protesta,&quot; &quot;Protest Song.&quot; This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And we&#8217;re going to link to Juan&#8217;s column in the New York Daily News today, having just come last night from a big gathering in Queens, New York, of hundreds of people—the headline, &quot;Obama&#8217;s Immigration Actions are Bittersweet for Some.&quot; JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a prime-time speech Thursday night, President Obama outlined his plan to take executive action to grant temporary legal status to up to five million undocumented immigrants, protecting them from deportation.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like or what our last names are or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal: that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

AMYGOODMAN: Under the plan, undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents will be allowed to temporarily remain in the country and work legally if they’ve lived in the United States for at least five years and pass a background check. But the new plan will not provide relief to the parents of undocumented children, even those who qualified for deferred action in 2012. Immigrant rights groups held gatherings across the country last night to watch the president’s speech.

Juan, you were at one of those gatherings in Queens. Where were you? Who was there?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, in Jackson Heights on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, Make the Road New York, a very influential immigrant rights group, a grassroots organization here in this city, held a viewing party. The place was jammed, over 200 people crowding every single room with about a half dozen television sets. But to me, the most important part of it was not just the president’s speech, but the people giving testimony beforehand, talking in really emotional terms about the deportations that had torn apart families, the struggles that they had had coming to this country, being here 15, 20, 25 years without any kind of legal status. It was really an emotional night as they prepared to hear the president give his presentation.

And, of course, this—we’ve got to take this in context. It was nine years ago next month when the infamous Sensenbrenner bill was passed in the House of Representatives that would make it a felony for you to be in the country illegally or for anyone to assist an undocumented immigrant. And that is really what touched off this modern human rights movement, that we know as the immigrant rights movement, in a massive way, because by that spring millions of people had poured into the streets of all the major cities in the country. And everything that’s gone on since then has been a reaction to this whole new grassroots human rights movement of the immigrant community in the United States.

So this was a historic moment here, a culmination of that, although it’s—as everyone said in the speeches last night, there’s a long way yet to go, because this temporary resolution is just that, a temporary resolution. And in fact, it will be six months before any of the parents of undocumented immigrants can actually apply for legal status. And so that the Republicans in Congress, a new Republican majority has basically a six-month window, as Congressman Luis Gutiérrez said, to finally do something, rather than just complain and whine about what the president has done now.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: Now, here’s the thing. We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we’re going to offer the following deal. If you have been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you’re willing to pay your fair share of taxes, you’ll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s President Obama last night in this historic address. I want to bring into this conversation two guests from Seattle, Washington, a mother and her daughter. Maru Mora Villalpando is an activist and undocumented Immigrant with the group Latino Advocacy. And we’re joined by her daughter, Josefina Mora. She is a U.S. citizen.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Because Josefina is a U.S. citizen, that means that you, too, will become a U.S. citizen—is that right—under President Obama’s plans?

MARUMORAVILLALPANDO: Good morning. Well, under this plan, I only get to be here for three years without being deported, and I could apply for a work permit. But that doesn’t put me in the path to legal permanent residence and then the path to citizenship. This is just a temporary relief. This is not permanent. It’s not really immigration status whatsoever. It’s very similar to what was granted to the childhood arrivals, the famous DACA.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you hear that already some of the Republicans in Congress are threatening to go to court, and some Republican governors are saying they will fight in their local states against providing work permits or providing driver’s licenses under the president’s executive order, what’s your response?

MARUMORAVILLALPANDO: Well, it’s not surprising. I think that Republicans have been really good at showing that they’re anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-poor, anti-children. So when we fought for this incredible victory of ours, when we decided to shut down ICE, to put ourselves at risk of arrest and deportation, when the hunger strikers decided to call the attention of the world the detention center in Tacoma by putting themselves on risk, and their lives and their health, we knew that our target was the president, Obama, and we knew we were right. Obviously, we knew that whatever he does will be challenged by the Republicans, because that’s all they’ve been doing throughout all these years is challenging all his work.

So, what we are going to do is to continue fighting, not only to keep what we have right now—which is very little, but it’s a step—but also to expand it, to make sure that others are included, because the Not One More campaign, that’s what it’s about, is to stop all deportations. And most importantly is to make it permanent, not only a three-year program that will be renewed, but who knows what will happen if another president comes in? We cannot be relying anymore on politics and allow politicians to use us anymore as their political ball to play with.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Josefina Mora, one of the things that the president mentioned is that he plans to eliminate the Secure Communities program and replace it with a new program that would target much more those undocumented immigrants who are felons. Could you talk about how Secure Communities has affected the many Latino communities across the country?

JOSEFINAMORA: Yeah, so, Secure Communities has really implemented more dividing families, not only because it allows local enforcement to work with ICE, but also because even if these people don’t have—aren’t charged with anything, they’re going to be—they have an ICE holder on them, and they can at any time be taken by ICE. So, many of the cases that we’ve worked with, many of the people that I know, have been affected by Secure Communities. And that’s actually, I think, the biggest thing that has leaded to detention, is Secure Communities.

And although he, Obama, announced that he was going to end it, he said that he was going to ramp up more enforcement for those who do not qualify for this. So that puts people who do not qualify for this in even more danger than they were before. And, you know, really, that’s—although he’s granting temporary relief, he’s still making it a little bit worse for people who will not qualify. And although I’m lucky that my mom qualifies for this, I’m worried for people like me who actually are not citizens, my counterparts, who will be even in more fear than I am right now for my mom. They will be in more fear for their parents in the future.

AMYGOODMAN: Josefina, how old are you?

JOSEFINAMORA: I’m 17.

AMYGOODMAN: You know, I think your view is reflected by the satirical newspaper The Onion. It’s headline captured many critics’ disappointment, saying, "5 Million Illegal Immigrants to Realize Dreams of Having Deportation Deferred." Republicans, though, say President Obama has overstepped his constitutional power by acting on his own. This is House Speaker John Boehner.

SPEAKERJOHNBOEHNER: Instead of working together to fix our broken immigration system, the president says he’s acting on his own. That’s just not how our democracy works. The president has said before that he’s not king and he’s not an emperor. But he’s sure acting like one. And he’s doing it at a time when the American people want nothing more than for us to work together.

AMYGOODMAN: So, we’re going to go back to our guests right now in Seattle, in Seattle, Washington. How are you, Josefina, going to organize? And, Maru Mora Villalpando, how will you be organizing at this point, because this is a period where decisions will be made as the Senate becomes Republican?

JOSEFINAMORA: Well, you know, I have always organized with my mom. I kind of have followed her wherever I’ve gone—wherever she’s gone, since I was about three years old. So, whatever she does, I will support her, and I will follow her, and I will do whatever I can in my school and in my community for people my age who do not—are not informed about the issue to really get involved and to really use, especially my white friends, to use their white privilege and their power to really influence decisions that are made in the future. And I hope to even in the future run for political office so that I can help in some small way to change this broken system, even though it’s changing, but very, very, very, very slowly. So, hopefully in the future, I’ll be able to help change that.

AMYGOODMAN: It’s interesting that President Obama is flying right now to Nevada. IN Nevada, it’s something like 17, 18 percent of kids have at least one parent who is undocumented, and I think in the state something like 8 percent of the whole population is undocumented. That’s where he will be making his announcement again, following two years ago where he was in Las Vegas, as well. Maru Mora Villalpando, your response?

MARUMORAVILLALPANDO: Yeah, absolutely. I think that he is trying to sell this. And that’s the way he sounded last night: very apologetic. I think he just played with the rhetoric that the Republicans have used all this time.

For us, when reading the details of his action, of his executive action, it shows that now more than ever he made it really easy for us to know how we’re going to organize. We’re going to organize those that are left behind. We’re going to organize those that are going to be drafted into the military because there will be no route for them into any status. We’re going to work with those that will be targeted by this different program, just with a different name, but it’s really the same program—the PEP instead of the Secure Communities program. We’re going to work with border communities, including here in Washington state, that will see even more militarized border. We will continue working in addressing—pushing for the addressing of the roots of migration and the political stand and economic stand that the U.S. has portrayed throughout our countries that has really been the one that pushed us to this point of having to migrate. So, for us, the work at the detention center will continue more than ever, because it’s really—it’s really sad that those that organized the hunger strike, that those that put themselves on the line inside, are not going to benefit from this executive action. So, really, for us, the work just begun.

AMYGOODMAN: Maru Mora Villalpando, I want to thank you for being with us. And, you know, we last talked to you when you were protesting the immigration detention center in Washington. In Texas, a new 2,400-bed family detention center is set to open this December in Dilley, Texas. Josefina Mora, we also want to thank you for being with us. Again, Josefina is 17. She’s a U.S. citizen, so her mother, Maru Mora Villalpando, will qualify for the—under the executive order. This is Democracy Now! We’re going to continue on the issue of immigration and also the mass protests that are taking place in Mexico. We’ll talk to a leader of the New Sanctuary Movement. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Triste Bufon, "Canción de Protesta," "Protest Song." This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And we’re going to link to Juan’s column in the New York Daily News today, having just come last night from a big gathering in Queens, New York, of hundreds of people—the headline, "Obama’s Immigration Actions are Bittersweet for Some."

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Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500As Mexicans Protest US-Fueled Drug War, Sanctuary Movement Backs Church Refuge for the Undocumentedhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/21/as_mexicans_protest_us_fueled_drug
tag:democracynow.org,2014-11-21:en/story/5f3f75 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Thursday, people from around the world joined a day of action to demand justice for the 43 Mexican students from Ayotzinapa teacher&#8217;s college who have been missing since September following a police attack. Earlier this month, authorities said two suspects had confessed to killing the students and incinerating their bodies, leading investigators to badly burned remains, which are still being analyzed. Outrage erupted across Mexico Thursday as caravans of the missing students&#8217; families and classmates converged in Mexico City. Tens of thousands rallied in the main square, and a 30-foot effigy of President Enrique Peña Nieto was set on fire. Here in New York, protesters gathered in front of the Mexican Consulate. These are some of their voices, beginning with Israel Galindo. It took him about two minutes to read the list of cities and countries participating in the day of action.
ISRAEL GALINDO : Denver, Colorado; Bakerfield, California; El Paso; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Phoenix; Illinois; San Marcos; etc.
PROTESTERS : The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated!
ERIKA VELAZQUEZ : [translated] I am from the community that is now bleeding. I am outraged. I came to this country looking for the American dream, and I left my roots and I left my family behind. It&#8217;s difficult to live in this country, calling every night to see if we&#8217;re going to find our relatives alive. I am the daughter of a rural teacher, a teacher who taught some of the young people who are now disappeared. She prays every night that they find them, because she does not believe that those ashes belong to that which she sowed, to the people she taught since they were small, how to write, how to fight. Ayotzinapa is not the beginning of the violence in Mexico. It has to be the end.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Erika Velazquez, who&#8217;s from the Mexican state of Guerrero, speaking Thursday night here in New York City. The protesters marched from Grand Central Station, where some staged a die-in.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by one of the organizers of the day&#8217;s events, Juan Carlos Ruiz, a priest and community activist who serves as immigration liaison with the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He&#8217;s also one of the co-founders of the New Sanctuary Movement, which is supporting immigrants across the country who have taken refuge in churches to avoid deportation.
So, very interesting timing—you have these mass protests in Mexico and the United States, not related to President Obama speaking last night, but in fact it all converges on the same day.
JUAN CARLOS RUIZ : It&#8217;s basically something that is related. I know it can not seem, but we—organizers here in New York City, we keep saying that if Mexico does not have a solution, we&#8217;ll have continuing waves of new immigrants coming to this—to our shores. There has been a dirty war being played on Mexico, sponsored by U.S. dollars. It&#8217;s $2.1 billion so far. And this is negatively impacting our communities, our people. The bullets that we may find in the students, that we find in our peasants, in our indigenous people, are labeled &quot;U.S.-made.&quot; So this is a murder made in U.S., and we need to denounce that. If there is no solution to Mexico, we will be accepting or being forced to accept new waves of immigrants coming from Mexico. I mean, these are our neighbors from the south.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and clearly, about two-thirds of all the undocumented in the country come from Mexico, so your point is well taken in terms of the enormous role that Mexico plays in terms of American society and in terms of the immigrant population, Latino immigrant population. But I wanted to ask you—there&#8217;s been some indication that the Obama administration has especially pressed forward on this, that the migration from Mexico has reduced, has tamped down in recent years. But that doesn&#8217;t mean necessarily that those who are coming are not fleeing, as you say, the political troubles and the repression that they&#8217;re facing.
JUAN CARLOS RUIZ : Yes, and you have to look at this. Mexico has waged—staged this image that Mexico has become a secure, peaceful country, and this is the image that is being projected to the exterior, while the Mexican people know that our institutions are falling apart. There is a grabbing of land by multinationals, by corporations, that is displacing massive amounts of people. You know, Mexico has the most NAFTA treaties signed. You know, with this new signed reform, energy reform, we are expecting more people being kind of abandoned by the institution, being forced out of their homes.
AMY GOODMAN : Among the marchers at Thursday&#8217;s rally here in New York, the march that you led, was Lucero Acosta, who came to the U.S. this year from Morelos, Mexico, seeking political asylum.
LUCERO ACOSTA : Eight months ago, I came asking for political asylum, because—I can&#8217;t talk too much about my case, but I couldn&#8217;t stay anymore in Mexico because of the violence and corruption. It&#8217;s a nightmare living in Mexico now. There is violence everywhere. People is dying everywhere. Like, Mexico is bleeding. We&#8217;re receiving like calls from people asking for money, and if we don&#8217;t give them money, you know, they tell us that we&#8217;re going to get killed. Some of the women have been raped. And we—the government doesn&#8217;t do anything about it. Like, if we go and tell the police, they will say, &quot;Oh, if you don&#8217;t have any proof, we can&#8217;t help you.&quot; So, it&#8217;s very difficult to live in a country where nobody—like, there is no justice, nobody can help us.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Lucero Acosta, who went on to say that she will not be able to apply under the new—she won&#8217;t benefit from Obama&#8217;s executive action, because she came to the United States too recently. But she fears for her life if she&#8217;s sent back to Mexico. Speaking of which, we turn now to the issue of the New Sanctuary Movement. In Philadelphia, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, who&#8217;s a mother of two U.S. citizens, entered a church this week to take sanctuary from her final deportation order.
ANGELA NAVARRO : [translated] My name is Angela Navarro, mother of two citizens and spouse of a citizen, leader of my parish, worker. And I am tired of living in the fear and darkness of being deported. I am taking sanctuary, which means I will live in a church without leaving, leaving behind my life, my home, my work, to fight so the government withdraws my deportation order. We demand that President Obama keep his promise and end all deportations.
AMY GOODMAN : Immigrants with U.S. citizen children, like Angela Navarro, will benefit from Obama&#8217;s executive order, but it remains unclear if those who have final deportation orders already issued against them will be spared. So far, for now, Navarro remains in the church. Juan Carlos Ruiz, can you talk about what&#8217;s happening? It&#8217;s in Denver, Philadelphia, people taking refuge in churches, like the old sanctuary movement.
JUAN CARLOS RUIZ : Yeah. Well, we basically see that most of our people, the majority of our people, are not going to find any relief. It is a hopeful sign, this executive order, but it&#8217;s fragile. We don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going to happen after the new administration takes on. So, what we&#8217;ve been doing, in terms—around the nation is that our faith communities are organizing to really push the envelope, to really allow the people who are suffering from this unjust law to tell their story, to humanize. Right now, I think there is a climate, a culture bent on destruction, bent on separating our families, bent on enforcing a law that is still very much splitting up the people from our communities.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what&#8217;s been the response from the hierarchies of some of the major churches to the sanctuary movement of individual churches?
JUAN CARLOS RUIZ : Justice—the sense of justice and outrage is felt. But I am afraid that many times we, as churches, as religious institutions, we fall into the trap of—we have a great infrastructure of servicing, and we do not do enough in terms of seeking the justice that is needed. And I am afraid that that infrastructure is riddled with an enforcement, punitive aspect of our laws, that do not provide any relief, any human decency, any dignity for the people that we are serving.
AMY GOODMAN : Juan Carlos Ruiz, we want to thank you for being with us, priest and co-founder of the New Sanctuary Movement, immigration liaison with the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Thursday, people from around the world joined a day of action to demand justice for the 43 Mexican students from Ayotzinapa teacher’s college who have been missing since September following a police attack. Earlier this month, authorities said two suspects had confessed to killing the students and incinerating their bodies, leading investigators to badly burned remains, which are still being analyzed. Outrage erupted across Mexico Thursday as caravans of the missing students’ families and classmates converged in Mexico City. Tens of thousands rallied in the main square, and a 30-foot effigy of President Enrique Peña Nieto was set on fire. Here in New York, protesters gathered in front of the Mexican Consulate. These are some of their voices, beginning with Israel Galindo. It took him about two minutes to read the list of cities and countries participating in the day of action.

PROTESTERS: The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated!

ERIKAVELAZQUEZ: [translated] I am from the community that is now bleeding. I am outraged. I came to this country looking for the American dream, and I left my roots and I left my family behind. It’s difficult to live in this country, calling every night to see if we’re going to find our relatives alive. I am the daughter of a rural teacher, a teacher who taught some of the young people who are now disappeared. She prays every night that they find them, because she does not believe that those ashes belong to that which she sowed, to the people she taught since they were small, how to write, how to fight. Ayotzinapa is not the beginning of the violence in Mexico. It has to be the end.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Erika Velazquez, who’s from the Mexican state of Guerrero, speaking Thursday night here in New York City. The protesters marched from Grand Central Station, where some staged a die-in.

For more, we’re joined by one of the organizers of the day’s events, Juan Carlos Ruiz, a priest and community activist who serves as immigration liaison with the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He’s also one of the co-founders of the New Sanctuary Movement, which is supporting immigrants across the country who have taken refuge in churches to avoid deportation.

So, very interesting timing—you have these mass protests in Mexico and the United States, not related to President Obama speaking last night, but in fact it all converges on the same day.

JUANCARLOSRUIZ: It’s basically something that is related. I know it can not seem, but we—organizers here in New York City, we keep saying that if Mexico does not have a solution, we’ll have continuing waves of new immigrants coming to this—to our shores. There has been a dirty war being played on Mexico, sponsored by U.S. dollars. It’s $2.1 billion so far. And this is negatively impacting our communities, our people. The bullets that we may find in the students, that we find in our peasants, in our indigenous people, are labeled "U.S.-made." So this is a murder made in U.S., and we need to denounce that. If there is no solution to Mexico, we will be accepting or being forced to accept new waves of immigrants coming from Mexico. I mean, these are our neighbors from the south.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and clearly, about two-thirds of all the undocumented in the country come from Mexico, so your point is well taken in terms of the enormous role that Mexico plays in terms of American society and in terms of the immigrant population, Latino immigrant population. But I wanted to ask you—there’s been some indication that the Obama administration has especially pressed forward on this, that the migration from Mexico has reduced, has tamped down in recent years. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that those who are coming are not fleeing, as you say, the political troubles and the repression that they’re facing.

JUANCARLOSRUIZ: Yes, and you have to look at this. Mexico has waged—staged this image that Mexico has become a secure, peaceful country, and this is the image that is being projected to the exterior, while the Mexican people know that our institutions are falling apart. There is a grabbing of land by multinationals, by corporations, that is displacing massive amounts of people. You know, Mexico has the most NAFTA treaties signed. You know, with this new signed reform, energy reform, we are expecting more people being kind of abandoned by the institution, being forced out of their homes.

AMYGOODMAN: Among the marchers at Thursday’s rally here in New York, the march that you led, was Lucero Acosta, who came to the U.S. this year from Morelos, Mexico, seeking political asylum.

LUCEROACOSTA: Eight months ago, I came asking for political asylum, because—I can’t talk too much about my case, but I couldn’t stay anymore in Mexico because of the violence and corruption. It’s a nightmare living in Mexico now. There is violence everywhere. People is dying everywhere. Like, Mexico is bleeding. We’re receiving like calls from people asking for money, and if we don’t give them money, you know, they tell us that we’re going to get killed. Some of the women have been raped. And we—the government doesn’t do anything about it. Like, if we go and tell the police, they will say, "Oh, if you don’t have any proof, we can’t help you." So, it’s very difficult to live in a country where nobody—like, there is no justice, nobody can help us.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Lucero Acosta, who went on to say that she will not be able to apply under the new—she won’t benefit from Obama’s executive action, because she came to the United States too recently. But she fears for her life if she’s sent back to Mexico. Speaking of which, we turn now to the issue of the New Sanctuary Movement. In Philadelphia, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, who’s a mother of two U.S. citizens, entered a church this week to take sanctuary from her final deportation order.

ANGELANAVARRO: [translated] My name is Angela Navarro, mother of two citizens and spouse of a citizen, leader of my parish, worker. And I am tired of living in the fear and darkness of being deported. I am taking sanctuary, which means I will live in a church without leaving, leaving behind my life, my home, my work, to fight so the government withdraws my deportation order. We demand that President Obama keep his promise and end all deportations.

AMYGOODMAN: Immigrants with U.S. citizen children, like Angela Navarro, will benefit from Obama’s executive order, but it remains unclear if those who have final deportation orders already issued against them will be spared. So far, for now, Navarro remains in the church. Juan Carlos Ruiz, can you talk about what’s happening? It’s in Denver, Philadelphia, people taking refuge in churches, like the old sanctuary movement.

JUANCARLOSRUIZ: Yeah. Well, we basically see that most of our people, the majority of our people, are not going to find any relief. It is a hopeful sign, this executive order, but it’s fragile. We don’t know what’s going to happen after the new administration takes on. So, what we’ve been doing, in terms—around the nation is that our faith communities are organizing to really push the envelope, to really allow the people who are suffering from this unjust law to tell their story, to humanize. Right now, I think there is a climate, a culture bent on destruction, bent on separating our families, bent on enforcing a law that is still very much splitting up the people from our communities.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s been the response from the hierarchies of some of the major churches to the sanctuary movement of individual churches?

JUANCARLOSRUIZ: Justice—the sense of justice and outrage is felt. But I am afraid that many times we, as churches, as religious institutions, we fall into the trap of—we have a great infrastructure of servicing, and we do not do enough in terms of seeking the justice that is needed. And I am afraid that that infrastructure is riddled with an enforcement, punitive aspect of our laws, that do not provide any relief, any human decency, any dignity for the people that we are serving.

AMYGOODMAN: Juan Carlos Ruiz, we want to thank you for being with us, priest and co-founder of the New Sanctuary Movement, immigration liaison with the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

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Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500Immigrant Rights Activists Vow to Continue Fighting Deportations as Obama Prepares Executive Orderhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/17/immigrant_rights_activists_vow_to_continue
tag:democracynow.org,2014-11-17:en/story/00e2ae AMY GOODMAN : Well, for more, we&#8217;re joined from Chicago by two guests who could be directly impacted by President Obama&#8217;s executive order on immigration: Rosi Carrasco and her daughter, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco. Rosi Carrasco is a member of Organized Communities Against Deportations. We first interviewed her when she was about to get arrested during a protest at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 calling for President Obama to stop deportations.
ACTIVISTS : No papers, no fear! No papers, no fear!
ROSI CARRASCO : Good afternoon. We are here to ask President Obama what his legacy will be. Will he be the president that has deported the most people in U.S. history? Or will he recognize our dignity and our right to organize? For that, we are risking arrest.
ACTIVISTS : Follow us!
AMY GOODMAN : That was Rosi Carrasco in 2012. At that point, she had lived in the United States for 18 years. Now it&#8217;s been 20 years. She&#8217;s originally from Mexico and came out as undocumented after her daughters did so first. She is one of the parents of the so-called DREAMers who could potentially benefit from Obama&#8217;s executive order.
And Ireri Unzueta Carrasco is with us, undocumented immigrant, recipient of the Deferred Action program, also member of Organized Communities Against Deportations and Undocumented Illinois, the daughter of Rosi.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! It&#8217;s great to have you with us. Rosi, can you respond to this latest news of the possible issuing of an executive order by President Obama?
ROSI CARRASCO : Yeah. Thank you for having us. And, you know, this is something that we have been fighting for, we have been organizing for. I think that it&#8217;s the step in the right direction. President Obama will do what he needed to do for a long time. And I know that he can defer it—he can grant Deferred Action. He can stop Secure Communities. And hopefully he will expand Deferred Action and to cover as many people as he can. So I think we are happy to get to this moment, and we will continue fighting to stop deportations of everyone, not us, not only the parents of citizens and the parents of DACA recipients.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I&#8217;d like to ask Ireri Unzueta Carrasco, what has this meant to you, the first order of the president, the DACA order that was issued a couple of years ago? What&#8217;s been the impact on you and other young people like yourself that are in a similar situation?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO : Hi, good morning. So, very honestly, I think it&#8217;s been a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, I have had access to jobs and opportunities that I didn&#8217;t have before. Right now I have a job that I love, working with young people here in Chicago. And I remember going to one of my first days, when I was signing my contract, and I had to bring in my work permit, right, my little piece of plastic that I didn&#8217;t have for over 18 years. And so, at the same time, I&#8217;ve been able to see a lot of people who haven&#8217;t had access to that, who are still seeing doors being closed to them about these opportunities that I believe everyone should have, right, the right to be able to work according to your abilities and to be able to have better opportunities. And so, for me, it&#8217;s been a bittersweet experience. I am happy that other people will have these opportunities now, but I also know that we&#8217;re going to have to keep fighting to make sure that everyone has access to well and dignified jobs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your concern over the last year, as President Obama first promised to take action, then held back, then promised again, then held back, and now has promised this week, finally, the third time he&#8217;s promised to take action? Your concern over this back-and-forth from the White House?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO : Yes, honestly, for me, every time that President Obama does this, it&#8217;s a little bit sad, right? We&#8217;re here in Chicago, where he was our senator, and then he became our president. And just to see that while, you know, Congress was debating and while President Obama was delaying action that he could have taken, we lost a lot of community members to deportation, right? Some are back in the countries that they came from. Some are figuring out what to do while they&#8217;re in detention. And so, honestly, like, this action cannot come soon enough.
AMY GOODMAN : Republicans in Congress have vowed to fight President Obama&#8217;s plan to change immigration laws through executive action. This is House Speaker John Boehner.
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER : You know, the president is threatening to take unilateral action on immigration, even though in the past he&#8217;s made clear he didn&#8217;t believe he had the constitutional responsibility or authority to do that. And I&#8217;ll just say this. We&#8217;re going to fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path. This is the wrong way to govern. This is exactly what the American people said on Election Day they didn&#8217;t want. And so, all the options are on the table. We&#8217;re having discussions with our members, and there are no decisions been made as to how we will fight this if he proceeds.
AMY GOODMAN : Rosi Carrasco, I&#8217;d like to get your response. And, you know, I&#8217;m going back to 2012 in Charlotte in front of the Democratic convention, that first day in the pouring rain, when you got arrested, as did your husband, Martin Unzueta—and I remember, just before he got arrested, he said, &quot;I&#8217;m undocumented. I&#8217;m living here for 18 years. I pay taxes. I&#8217;m paying more taxes than Citibank&quot;—as well as your other daughter. Can you talk about what Boehner says and where you see this country headed?
ROSI CARRASCO : You know, I think that it&#8217;s time to stop listening to the Republicans&#8217; threats. Undocumented immigrants has been having the courage to fight for their rights, and I think for the Democrats to start doing the same. For us, it&#8217;s very clear that we won&#8217;t stop until we see the deportations stopped. We will continue on organizing. We have been organizing. We have been doing protests in front of the detention centers. When Obama came here to make a fundraising, we did a protest in front of the hotel. So, for us, we are not going to stop. And if we, as immigrants, as undocumented immigrants, have had the courage to fight, I think Democrats can do it, too. And I think they need to stand up to the anti-immigrants in Congress and do the right thing. And they have an opportunity to do the right thing. I hope that they will do it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rosi Carrasco, can you tell us something in terms—you&#8217;ve been here now in the United States 20 years, undocumented. Could you talk a little bit about the toll it&#8217;s taken on you to be able to raise a family and be able to survive and maintain yourself with this constant threat of the possibility of being deported?
ROSI CARRASCO : Yeah. It is really hard to be in this country for 20 years. It is sad to see how you have to fight for things that are granted for every human being, like the right to work, to live without being afraid to have your family divided, as you mentioned. However, we are here. We are working, paying taxes. We have our families, my daughters. I love my daughters. I love my family, my community. And I have been fighting for have—this, what I have. It&#8217;s a human right that everyone should have. And for me, to be as close as we are now, to be able to have what—that opportunity to be considered as human being, to be considered someone that can live happy with their family and work and make contributions to this country is something very important. And I know that we are—stay here, and we will continue to be here, and we will continue working for our communities. And I hope that this society, this Congress, this government, recognizes this right that we have.
AMY GOODMAN : And finally, Ireri and Rosi, your decision to come out? Ireri, you eventually were, you know, granted the right to vote because of your activism, ultimately, and so many other young people&#8217;s. But that time years ago when you were deciding whether you could do this, given that you could be deported at any one of these actions or anywhere you spoke?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO : Well, to be honest, I mean, the right to work is a great thing, right? But before I had the Deferred Action, anything could have put me in deportation proceedings, any small mistake, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, right? I really wanted to travel, and traveling isn&#8217;t something that you can just do, necessarily, right? And sometimes there are risks involved, and there are, you know, different ways to get stopped. And so, this is a risk that I was running every day. To me, when I decided to come out publicly and talk about my status, it was a decision about that. If this is something that I&#8217;m facing every day, then I need to take this head-on. I need to be able to show my side of the story publicly, and I need to be able to use that to benefit the other members of my community. So, coming out as undocumented, to me, is something that was taking back that power that sometimes is taken away, right, by the government, by people saying that I don&#8217;t belong in this country, and saying, &quot;Look, this is where I&#8217;ve grown up. This is where my family is. This is where my work is. This is where I, you know, love here and all my family, wherever they are.&quot; And so, for me, coming out is part of that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ireri, I wanted to ask you to comment also on this whole issue that many Americans—not just Republicans, but other Americans who are not familiar with the immigration issue—raise, that why should you get legal status or your mother get legal status, when there are millions of people who have been waiting on line in other countries to come into the United States, even though we did have in 1986 an immigration bill that legalized the status of about three million people, and even though President Reagan himself, the following year, issued an executive order giving 200,000 Nicaraguans a legal status in the United States, as well. I&#8217;m just wondering, how do you respond to those Americans who say you should be getting to the back of the line with others who are trying to get into the country?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO : Well, I believe that the immigration system needs to be fixed, and there&#8217;s a lot of components that need to be fixed, including how long people have to wait to be able to come into the U.S. I know friends here who ended up coming across the border because they couldn&#8217;t wait the 20 or 18 years that it takes to get in here. And so, for me, just making sure that we are taking care of our communities, right—and that includes the people that are living within our borders now, whether or not they are undocumented—is very, very important. And so, I wish for people to take a look at their neighbors, a look at their friends. There are undocumented people amongst all of us. And we&#8217;re living, and we are struggling, and we are contributing, right? And, yes, there&#8217;s people that are waiting, and I believe that we need to fix all these things and stop terrorizing our communities through programs like Secure Communities and other Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.
AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you both for being with us, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco and your mom, Rosi Carrasco, both undocumented immigrants, though Ireri became documented through her activism, and members of Organized Communities Against Deportations in Chicago. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . We&#8217;ll be back in a minute with Naomi Klein. AMYGOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined from Chicago by two guests who could be directly impacted by President Obama’s executive order on immigration: Rosi Carrasco and her daughter, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco. Rosi Carrasco is a member of Organized Communities Against Deportations. We first interviewed her when she was about to get arrested during a protest at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 calling for President Obama to stop deportations.

ACTIVISTS: No papers, no fear! No papers, no fear!

ROSICARRASCO: Good afternoon. We are here to ask President Obama what his legacy will be. Will he be the president that has deported the most people in U.S. history? Or will he recognize our dignity and our right to organize? For that, we are risking arrest.

ACTIVISTS: Follow us!

AMYGOODMAN: That was Rosi Carrasco in 2012. At that point, she had lived in the United States for 18 years. Now it’s been 20 years. She’s originally from Mexico and came out as undocumented after her daughters did so first. She is one of the parents of the so-called DREAMers who could potentially benefit from Obama’s executive order.

And Ireri Unzueta Carrasco is with us, undocumented immigrant, recipient of the Deferred Action program, also member of Organized Communities Against Deportations and Undocumented Illinois, the daughter of Rosi.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Rosi, can you respond to this latest news of the possible issuing of an executive order by President Obama?

ROSICARRASCO: Yeah. Thank you for having us. And, you know, this is something that we have been fighting for, we have been organizing for. I think that it’s the step in the right direction. President Obama will do what he needed to do for a long time. And I know that he can defer it—he can grant Deferred Action. He can stop Secure Communities. And hopefully he will expand Deferred Action and to cover as many people as he can. So I think we are happy to get to this moment, and we will continue fighting to stop deportations of everyone, not us, not only the parents of citizens and the parents of DACA recipients.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask Ireri Unzueta Carrasco, what has this meant to you, the first order of the president, the DACA order that was issued a couple of years ago? What’s been the impact on you and other young people like yourself that are in a similar situation?

IRERIUNZUETACARRASCO: Hi, good morning. So, very honestly, I think it’s been a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, I have had access to jobs and opportunities that I didn’t have before. Right now I have a job that I love, working with young people here in Chicago. And I remember going to one of my first days, when I was signing my contract, and I had to bring in my work permit, right, my little piece of plastic that I didn’t have for over 18 years. And so, at the same time, I’ve been able to see a lot of people who haven’t had access to that, who are still seeing doors being closed to them about these opportunities that I believe everyone should have, right, the right to be able to work according to your abilities and to be able to have better opportunities. And so, for me, it’s been a bittersweet experience. I am happy that other people will have these opportunities now, but I also know that we’re going to have to keep fighting to make sure that everyone has access to well and dignified jobs.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your concern over the last year, as President Obama first promised to take action, then held back, then promised again, then held back, and now has promised this week, finally, the third time he’s promised to take action? Your concern over this back-and-forth from the White House?

IRERIUNZUETACARRASCO: Yes, honestly, for me, every time that President Obama does this, it’s a little bit sad, right? We’re here in Chicago, where he was our senator, and then he became our president. And just to see that while, you know, Congress was debating and while President Obama was delaying action that he could have taken, we lost a lot of community members to deportation, right? Some are back in the countries that they came from. Some are figuring out what to do while they’re in detention. And so, honestly, like, this action cannot come soon enough.

AMYGOODMAN: Republicans in Congress have vowed to fight President Obama’s plan to change immigration laws through executive action. This is House Speaker John Boehner.

SPEAKERJOHNBOEHNER: You know, the president is threatening to take unilateral action on immigration, even though in the past he’s made clear he didn’t believe he had the constitutional responsibility or authority to do that. And I’ll just say this. We’re going to fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path. This is the wrong way to govern. This is exactly what the American people said on Election Day they didn’t want. And so, all the options are on the table. We’re having discussions with our members, and there are no decisions been made as to how we will fight this if he proceeds.

AMYGOODMAN: Rosi Carrasco, I’d like to get your response. And, you know, I’m going back to 2012 in Charlotte in front of the Democratic convention, that first day in the pouring rain, when you got arrested, as did your husband, Martin Unzueta—and I remember, just before he got arrested, he said, "I’m undocumented. I’m living here for 18 years. I pay taxes. I’m paying more taxes than Citibank"—as well as your other daughter. Can you talk about what Boehner says and where you see this country headed?

ROSICARRASCO: You know, I think that it’s time to stop listening to the Republicans’ threats. Undocumented immigrants has been having the courage to fight for their rights, and I think for the Democrats to start doing the same. For us, it’s very clear that we won’t stop until we see the deportations stopped. We will continue on organizing. We have been organizing. We have been doing protests in front of the detention centers. When Obama came here to make a fundraising, we did a protest in front of the hotel. So, for us, we are not going to stop. And if we, as immigrants, as undocumented immigrants, have had the courage to fight, I think Democrats can do it, too. And I think they need to stand up to the anti-immigrants in Congress and do the right thing. And they have an opportunity to do the right thing. I hope that they will do it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rosi Carrasco, can you tell us something in terms—you’ve been here now in the United States 20 years, undocumented. Could you talk a little bit about the toll it’s taken on you to be able to raise a family and be able to survive and maintain yourself with this constant threat of the possibility of being deported?

ROSICARRASCO: Yeah. It is really hard to be in this country for 20 years. It is sad to see how you have to fight for things that are granted for every human being, like the right to work, to live without being afraid to have your family divided, as you mentioned. However, we are here. We are working, paying taxes. We have our families, my daughters. I love my daughters. I love my family, my community. And I have been fighting for have—this, what I have. It’s a human right that everyone should have. And for me, to be as close as we are now, to be able to have what—that opportunity to be considered as human being, to be considered someone that can live happy with their family and work and make contributions to this country is something very important. And I know that we are—stay here, and we will continue to be here, and we will continue working for our communities. And I hope that this society, this Congress, this government, recognizes this right that we have.

AMYGOODMAN: And finally, Ireri and Rosi, your decision to come out? Ireri, you eventually were, you know, granted the right to vote because of your activism, ultimately, and so many other young people’s. But that time years ago when you were deciding whether you could do this, given that you could be deported at any one of these actions or anywhere you spoke?

IRERIUNZUETACARRASCO: Well, to be honest, I mean, the right to work is a great thing, right? But before I had the Deferred Action, anything could have put me in deportation proceedings, any small mistake, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, right? I really wanted to travel, and traveling isn’t something that you can just do, necessarily, right? And sometimes there are risks involved, and there are, you know, different ways to get stopped. And so, this is a risk that I was running every day. To me, when I decided to come out publicly and talk about my status, it was a decision about that. If this is something that I’m facing every day, then I need to take this head-on. I need to be able to show my side of the story publicly, and I need to be able to use that to benefit the other members of my community. So, coming out as undocumented, to me, is something that was taking back that power that sometimes is taken away, right, by the government, by people saying that I don’t belong in this country, and saying, "Look, this is where I’ve grown up. This is where my family is. This is where my work is. This is where I, you know, love here and all my family, wherever they are." And so, for me, coming out is part of that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ireri, I wanted to ask you to comment also on this whole issue that many Americans—not just Republicans, but other Americans who are not familiar with the immigration issue—raise, that why should you get legal status or your mother get legal status, when there are millions of people who have been waiting on line in other countries to come into the United States, even though we did have in 1986 an immigration bill that legalized the status of about three million people, and even though President Reagan himself, the following year, issued an executive order giving 200,000 Nicaraguans a legal status in the United States, as well. I’m just wondering, how do you respond to those Americans who say you should be getting to the back of the line with others who are trying to get into the country?

IRERIUNZUETACARRASCO: Well, I believe that the immigration system needs to be fixed, and there’s a lot of components that need to be fixed, including how long people have to wait to be able to come into the U.S. I know friends here who ended up coming across the border because they couldn’t wait the 20 or 18 years that it takes to get in here. And so, for me, just making sure that we are taking care of our communities, right—and that includes the people that are living within our borders now, whether or not they are undocumented—is very, very important. And so, I wish for people to take a look at their neighbors, a look at their friends. There are undocumented people amongst all of us. And we’re living, and we are struggling, and we are contributing, right? And, yes, there’s people that are waiting, and I believe that we need to fix all these things and stop terrorizing our communities through programs like Secure Communities and other Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.

AMYGOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco and your mom, Rosi Carrasco, both undocumented immigrants, though Ireri became documented through her activism, and members of Organized Communities Against Deportations in Chicago. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute with Naomi Klein.

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Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500Is Obama's Immigration Plan Too Modest? Proposals Cover Less Than Half of Nation's Undocumentedhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/17/is_obamas_immigration_plan_too_modest
tag:democracynow.org,2014-11-17:en/story/73f6aa JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today&#8217;s show with news that President Obama is considering taking an executive action that would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation. According to The New York Times , Obama&#8217;s executive actions will not provide any formal, lasting immigration status, but many immigrants will receive work permits, which will give them Social Security numbers and allow them to work legally under their own names. Another key component could prevent the deportation of parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Speaking at a news conference in Burma, Obama vowed to take action by the end of the year.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : I believe that America is a nation of immigrants. Everybody agrees that the system is broken. There has been ample opportunity for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would strengthen our borders, improve the legal immigration system, lift millions of people out of the shadows so they are paying taxes and getting right by the law. It passed out of the Senate. I gave the House over a year to go ahead and at least give a vote to the Senate bill. They failed to do so. And I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if in fact Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better. And that&#8217;s going to happen. That&#8217;s going to happen before the end of the year.
AMY GOODMAN : That was President Obama speaking in Burma on Friday. Republican House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to fight any such action &quot;tooth and nail.&quot;
Meanwhile, last week, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over Obama&#8217;s record number of deportations. The group says the agency violated the law by failing to respond to a rule-making petition seeking relief for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Before we go to our first guest, Juan, you&#8217;ve been covering this issue very closely. Talk about the significance of President Obama&#8217;s words and plans.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the president clearly made the—he made the statement right after the election, that this was the direction he was going to go to. But what happened on Friday was that it&#8217;s becoming clearer that it&#8217;s going to happen sooner rather than later, as we head to the end of the year. But the key thing, I think, that&#8217;s being missed is that the numbers that are being bandied about, between 3.7 and 5.3 million undocumented, that number includes the 1.2 million young people that are already under a protected status, or deferred deportation, under DACA . So it&#8217;s really a much more modest number that we&#8217;re talking about. And the difference is, it&#8217;s still a question of what plan President Obama takes, whether he will require the parents of U.S. citizen children to have been here at least 10 years or five years, which would affect the final number, and whether he will include the parents of the DACA young people who have already received a deferred deportation situation. And, of course, this is all temporary, because Congress can change it at any moment. So, I think it&#8217;s actually a pretty modest proposal whichever way President Obama goes, because even at the most expansive plan, which would be about 5.3 million people, that&#8217;s still less than half of the undocumented that are in the country currently.
AMY GOODMAN : And President Obama having said in the past he&#8217;s not king, you know, sort of raising questions about whether he would issue an executive order. He&#8217;s certainly changed his tune there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I think there&#8217;s been no question that he made—he signaled, from the beginning of the year, pretty much, that he was at some point going to act if Congress did not. So I think he&#8217;s merely following through on what his initial promise to the Congress was, if the Republicans could not pass an immigration bill, because, remember, the Senate bill that was passed more than a year ago, if there&#8217;s not an accompanying bill by the House by the end of December, that bill will be void, and then both the Senate and the House would have to start all over again in January. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with news that President Obama is considering taking an executive action that would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation. According to The New York Times, Obama’s executive actions will not provide any formal, lasting immigration status, but many immigrants will receive work permits, which will give them Social Security numbers and allow them to work legally under their own names. Another key component could prevent the deportation of parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Speaking at a news conference in Burma, Obama vowed to take action by the end of the year.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: I believe that America is a nation of immigrants. Everybody agrees that the system is broken. There has been ample opportunity for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would strengthen our borders, improve the legal immigration system, lift millions of people out of the shadows so they are paying taxes and getting right by the law. It passed out of the Senate. I gave the House over a year to go ahead and at least give a vote to the Senate bill. They failed to do so. And I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if in fact Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better. And that’s going to happen. That’s going to happen before the end of the year.

AMYGOODMAN: That was President Obama speaking in Burma on Friday. Republican House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to fight any such action "tooth and nail."

Meanwhile, last week, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over Obama’s record number of deportations. The group says the agency violated the law by failing to respond to a rule-making petition seeking relief for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Before we go to our first guest, Juan, you’ve been covering this issue very closely. Talk about the significance of President Obama’s words and plans.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the president clearly made the—he made the statement right after the election, that this was the direction he was going to go to. But what happened on Friday was that it’s becoming clearer that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, as we head to the end of the year. But the key thing, I think, that’s being missed is that the numbers that are being bandied about, between 3.7 and 5.3 million undocumented, that number includes the 1.2 million young people that are already under a protected status, or deferred deportation, under DACA. So it’s really a much more modest number that we’re talking about. And the difference is, it’s still a question of what plan President Obama takes, whether he will require the parents of U.S. citizen children to have been here at least 10 years or five years, which would affect the final number, and whether he will include the parents of the DACA young people who have already received a deferred deportation situation. And, of course, this is all temporary, because Congress can change it at any moment. So, I think it’s actually a pretty modest proposal whichever way President Obama goes, because even at the most expansive plan, which would be about 5.3 million people, that’s still less than half of the undocumented that are in the country currently.

AMYGOODMAN: And President Obama having said in the past he’s not king, you know, sort of raising questions about whether he would issue an executive order. He’s certainly changed his tune there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I think there’s been no question that he made—he signaled, from the beginning of the year, pretty much, that he was at some point going to act if Congress did not. So I think he’s merely following through on what his initial promise to the Congress was, if the Republicans could not pass an immigration bill, because, remember, the Senate bill that was passed more than a year ago, if there’s not an accompanying bill by the House by the end of December, that bill will be void, and then both the Senate and the House would have to start all over again in January.

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Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500Migrant Women, Children Allege Harsh Conditions, Sexual Assault at For-Profit Texas Immigration Jailhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/8/migrant_women_children_allege_harsh_conditions
tag:democracynow.org,2014-10-08:en/story/db6e31 AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, as we broadcast here in Texas, where a controversial new family detention center has opened about, oh, an hour south of San Antonio. The Karnes County Residential Center began holding more than 500 immigrant women and children in August. Many of them came to the United States seeking asylum from violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador. But the Obama administration says it&#8217;s detaining them in order to discourage more migrants from coming.
Only a handful of detainees have been released. One of them spoke to Democracy Now! about her ordeal. Sara Aida Beltrán Rodríguez fled here from El Salvador with her seven-year-old daughter Nayely, who was suffering from brain cancer. In this interview, she describes what happened after she and her daughter were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. Then we hear from their lawyer, who helped secure their release from detention.
SARA AIDA BELTRÁN RODRÍGUEZ: [translated] I crossed the river. I ended up in McAllen at the detention center. I was interviewed on video, and the man that interviewed me did ask me, and all I got to say was about the situation with my daughter. They informed me that I had a deportation and that they weren&#8217;t going to be able to help me.
When I arrived at Karnes, I was told to tell them everything at an interview there, and I told them about my daughter&#8217;s case. They encouraged me to tell them the whole story. And I did. And they did examine her to see how she was, just like they do to all the children, just a normal physical examination. And I thought that they were going to help me by having a specialist examine her, but they were not able to, because of—I think maybe because it was really costly. And I kept asking for that and expecting some sort of help in that area, but I didn&#8217;t get any.
I did notice that her left arm, the movement was very limited, and her feet were falling asleep. And I thought that it was because we were in a small space and she wasn&#8217;t getting out. And I could see that she was very stressed about being locked in there. And she was crying every night. And she would ask, &quot;When are we leaving? Why are we here? When are we going to get out?&quot; And I saw her suffer a lot, and it was devastating.
KATE LINCOLN - GOLDFINCH : My name is Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. I&#8217;m an immigration lawyer, and I&#8217;m representing Sara and Nayely in their immigration proceedings. I was contacted by the UT Immigration Clinic about midway through August this year regarding Sara and Nayely&#8217;s case. They had discovered that Sara and Nayely were detained and that Nayely had a malignant brain tumor and was not receiving treatment. The UT clinic had sent a letter to immigration asking for Nayely&#8217;s release and had not received a response, and then they passed the case onto me to take over pro bono representation to see if I could maybe get them out.
The first thing I did was have an MRI report translated. Sara had an MRI report that was two years old. And we discovered that her situation was very dire. She had not only a growing malignant brain tumor, but she also had a shunt installed in her brain that was to drain fluid, and it could have malfunctioned at any time. We weren&#8217;t sure how it was operating. And if it did malfunction, she could have severe brain damage or not survive. And so, it was very, very distressing once I learned that that was the situation and that Nayely was not receiving care.
And when I didn&#8217;t receive any response from ICE after my inquiries, we decided to do a media campaign. So I partnered with Grassroots Leadership, and we issued a press release, and Grassroots Leadership mobilized their base to start calling ICE and making inquiries. And about two days after that campaign, I got a call from the deportation officer that Sara and Nayely were going to be released under parole. They weren&#8217;t required to pay a bond. And as far as I know, this is the only case out of Karnes where a parole has been obtained.
AMY GOODMAN : That was immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch and her client Sara Aida Beltrán Rodríguez, who was, until recently, one of the 500 women held in the new family detention center in Karnes City, an hour south of San Antonio, along with her little daughter Nayely. Nayely is now undergoing evaluation at the Dell Children&#8217;s Medical Center of Central Texas in Austin. This comes as other immigrant women imprisoned at the Karnes facility have accused guards of sexually assaulting them. Special thanks to Renée Feltz for that report.
A federal complaint filed last week says guards are promising women help with their immigration cases in return for sexual favors. Meanwhile, immigration officials have announced plans for a new 2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley, Texas, another town not far from San Antonio.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. Javier Maldonado is an immigration and civil rights attorney based in San Antonio. His law firm joined the MALDEF , the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the University of Texas School of Law; and Human Rights First in filing the complaint last week with the Department of Homeland Security over &quot;serious allegations of substantial, ongoing sexual abuse&quot; at the Karnes County facility. They&#8217;ve also filed a complaint over poor conditions there. And Cristina Parker is immigration projects coordinator for Grassroots Leadership and co-author of their new report , &quot;For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making Millions by Locking Up Refugee Families.&quot;
Welcome both to you here in San Antonio. I want to discuss the report we just heard about this mother and her daughter, her daughter who she brought into the United States to deal with brain cancer. But this latest allegations, Javier Maldonado, why don&#8217;t we start there, with this complaint that you filed?
JAVIER MALDONADO : Sure, sure. We, a group of attorneys and myself, started visiting the facility to render pro bono assistance to the families there, the moms and children. And we began to hear complaints of women being taken out in the middle of the night, that women had been offered money, that they had been offered promises of help with their immigration cases, and that many of these women were seen either being fondled or kissing with the guards. These are particularly vulnerable women, who have traveled a long journey, escaping violence and domestic violence, in many cases, their home countries. And they were subjected to these sorts of sexual coercion and sexual abuse. And for that reason—
AMY GOODMAN : And their fear if they don&#8217;t give in?
JAVIER MALDONADO : That&#8217;s right. Well, you know, and the fear that they don&#8217;t give in, and they have very little in that facility. There were—our other complaint was about the conditions and there not being enough food for the families and the children. And so, if you are being promised a little bit of money, if you&#8217;re being promised access to kitchen, if you&#8217;re being promised extra milk, you know, that is a terrible condition for families to be living in.
AMY GOODMAN : And talk about the conditions at the prison.
JAVIER MALDONADO : Yes. We also were interviewing the families and learning that, for example, toddlers, who need to crawl, were being restricted from crawling, that there weren&#8217;t toys or books for the children in their cells, because, let&#8217;s be honest, regardless of what the sign says on the outside, that it is a residential center, it is a jail. There are bars. It is surrounded by barbed wire. These women are not getting out. These children are not getting out. In the hot Texas sun, there are very, very few places to play. So when we were visiting them in August and in September, the saddest thing was that that was the only opportunity for the children to come into the visiting area and play with the toys. It&#8217;s when their moms were meeting with attorneys. This is not a place where families should be held. This is not a place where kids should be held.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you tell us more about Nayely, this little girl we just met in Renée&#8217;s report?
JAVIER MALDONADO : Right. I didn&#8217;t represent her. My friend Kate represented her. She has a very serious medical condition. The facility at Karnes just is not equipped to handle these sorts of medical problems.
AMY GOODMAN : She&#8217;s seven years old.
JAVIER MALDONADO : She&#8217;s seven years old. It took a media campaign and pleadings from the community to finally force or persuade Homeland Security to release this mom and child. It shouldn&#8217;t take a media campaign to get medical attention. Nayely is one person that fortunately was released from the facility, but there are other children suffering other conditions—asthma—
AMY GOODMAN : You&#8217;ve represented other children.
JAVIER MALDONADO : Yes, yes. You know, children who are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, because they were threatened, they were beaten; women who were raped in their home country. This is not a facility that&#8217;s affording—that&#8217;s providing the care that these families need.
AMY GOODMAN : Javier, how old is your youngest client?
JAVIER MALDONADO : The youngest one, he was just released on Friday, two years old.
AMY GOODMAN : And what was his story? How long was he held in the facility?
JAVIER MALDONADO : He was held for approximately eight weeks.
AMY GOODMAN : With his mother.
JAVIER MALDONADO : With his mother, he and his five-year-old brother were held in that facility.
AMY GOODMAN : What is the alternative?
JAVIER MALDONADO : The alternative is what was done in the past, which was parents—the families were given an immigration hearing to come and report. If the government believes that that is insufficient, if—guarantees that the families will show up, there are other alternatives. There&#8217;s electronic monitoring. There is, for example, requiring the family to report on a weekly basis, either in person or by phone. There&#8217;s other things that this administration could have done short of putting mothers and children behind bars.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re also joined by Cristina Parker. She has a new report out called &quot;For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making MIllions by Locking Up Refugee Families.&quot; Talk about who runs Karnes.
CRISTINA PARKER : Sure. The GEO Group is the private prison company that is contracted to run the Karnes County family detention center. And they have a long track record of abuse and neglect and misconduct in their facilities. It should be no surprise to anyone, actually, that sexual abuse and denial of medical treatment happened almost as soon as the facility was opened.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you give more examples of what you have found?
CRISTINA PARKER : Sure. You know, one of the things that we see is that this misconduct is really persistent. For instance, in the Walnut Grove juvenile center in Mississippi, guards frequently used beatings and violence and sexual assault against the boys who are held there. They also retaliated a lot against people when they complained. So the boys would complain about their treatment, and they&#8217;d be put into solitary confinement. So, if you look many miles away at a facility in Pecos, Texas, called the Reeves detention center, the same thing happened. A man who had—who suffered from epilepsy complained of his lack of medical treatment, and he was put into solitary confinement. He spent a month there before he died of complications of a seizure alone. It actually caused a riot in the prison.
AMY GOODMAN : How are these facilities placed? How are they planned? Is there community input?
CRISTINA PARKER : There&#8217;s no community input when these facilities are planned. And they&#8217;re placed in really remote areas. Karnes is a little bit away from where we&#8217;re sitting right now, but there&#8217;s a new one planned in Dilley, Texas, which is even more remote, further south.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk about this facility? We&#8217;re talking 2,400 beds?
CRISTINA PARKER : Yeah, Dilley, it&#8217;s really shocking. It can&#8217;t really be overstated how shocking and how big this detention center is going to be. Once it—
AMY GOODMAN : How big is Karnes?
CRISTINA PARKER : Karnes is holding 532 people. It is rumored that they want to expand it to maybe double. But even then, Dilley dwarfs it. You know, Dilley is going to be 2,400 beds, the largest single immigrant detention center in the country, dwarfing all the others. And this is where they&#8217;re going to hold women and children. I think, you know, it&#8217;s shocking.
AMY GOODMAN : Will this be run by GEO ?
CRISTINA PARKER : No, the Dilley center is rumored to be run by CCA , and CCA is the Corrections Corporation of America, the same company that ran the disgraced T. Don Hutto family detention center, which is in Taylor, Texas. And the thing that&#8217;s so shocking there is that we&#8217;re seeing the exact same things be repeated. In Hutto, we heard reports of guards threatening children for being children—for playing, for being loud—with separation from their parents. That&#8217;s the exact same thing we heard when we went to Karnes recently, and it&#8217;s a persistent problem. Another problem is women and children are losing weight. You know, imagine an infant losing weight because the food is so poor. That&#8217;s exactly what we heard at Hutto under CCA , and it&#8217;s exactlywhat we&#8217;re hearing at Karnes under GEO .
AMY GOODMAN : And what is the rationale for these private corporations to come in and run these prisons, Javier Maldonado?
JAVIER MALDONADO : Well, what is the—profit. It&#8217;s to make money. The government pays them on a per-day basis, whether it&#8217;s filled or not. And the longer they keep people there, the more money they make. Why do they place them where they do, in Karnes or in Dilley? Because there are no attorneys there. Because no one can get to them. Because it&#8217;s just in remote places where nobody will see them, and we don&#8217;t have to think about them.
AMY GOODMAN : Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE , spokesperson Nina Pruneda said in a statement that, quote, &quot; ICE remains committed to ensuring all individuals in our custody are held and treated in a safe, secure and humane manner. Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken,&quot; she said. While she wouldn&#8217;t comment on the specific complaints about sexual misconduct at Karnes City family detention center, she said that there is a zero-tolerance policy against sexual assault in accordance with federal regulations. Cristina Parker, your response?
CRISTINA PARKER : Yeah, my response to that is they don&#8217;t seem to learn their lesson. We&#8217;ve seen this over and over and over with GEO , with CCA , with family detention. You know, it&#8217;s no surprise to any of us. I don&#8217;t know why they would keep going back to these companies.
AMY GOODMAN : You&#8217;re organizing a protest Saturday?
CRISTINA PARKER : We are, yeah. We&#8217;re going to be outside the Karnes County family detention center at noon this Saturday. We invite people to come with us and protest against this shameful practice, this inhumane practice of holding people there. And, you know, we&#8217;re not going to stop. Our hope is to stop the Dilley contract, as well.
AMY GOODMAN : Is it set in stone? Do you think there is a possibility that the Dilley contract, the 2,400-bed facility, might be stopped?
CRISTINA PARKER : You know, I don&#8217;t like to believe that. I really think that we can stop it. I think you know, community outcry and litigation ended family detention at Hutto, and I think we&#8217;re going to do it again.
AMY GOODMAN : Javier Maldonado, this is the Obama administration. He has been called the deporter-in-chief by the mainstream organizations of immigrants rights groups, more deportations under the Obama administration than we&#8217;ve ever seen under a president.
JAVIER MALDONADO : That&#8217;s right.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re at over, what, two million mark? We&#8217;ve passed that mark?
JAVIER MALDONADO : I think it has been at least 300,000 every year, over 300,000 every year, deportations.
AMY GOODMAN : What advice do you have for President Obama? What do you think needs to be done right now?
JAVIER MALDONADO : I don&#8217;t think—whether it&#8217;s him or his officials, I don&#8217;t think they appreciate the seriousness of the problem and what they&#8217;re causing, the injuries that they&#8217;re causing to families and children. Locking them up—
AMY GOODMAN : How many deportations a day?
JAVIER MALDONADO : A day from Karnes or?
AMY GOODMAN : Overall. Do you know that number?
JAVIER MALDONADO : Well, if it&#8217;s 300,000 a year, it&#8217;s at least 10,000 a month. You know, the figures are pretty large. And so, I don&#8217;t think they appreciate the seriousness of the problems of detaining mothers and children. We can understand why adult men would be detained or why even adult women might be detained, but detaining mothers and children has crossed the line between what is appropriate immigration policy and just plain punitive policies.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, and we will link to all reports. Javier Maldonado is an immigration and civil rights attorney here in San Antonio. Cristina Parker with Grassroots Leadership. We&#8217;ll link to that report , &quot;For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making MIllions by Locking Up Refugee Families.&quot;
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . We&#8217;re broadcasting from Trinity University in San Antonio from TigerTV. When we come back, we&#8217;ll talk more about what&#8217;s happening here in San Antonio and particularly talk about the issue of fracking. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we broadcast here in Texas, where a controversial new family detention center has opened about, oh, an hour south of San Antonio. The Karnes County Residential Center began holding more than 500 immigrant women and children in August. Many of them came to the United States seeking asylum from violence in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador. But the Obama administration says it’s detaining them in order to discourage more migrants from coming.

Only a handful of detainees have been released. One of them spoke to Democracy Now! about her ordeal. Sara Aida Beltrán Rodríguez fled here from El Salvador with her seven-year-old daughter Nayely, who was suffering from brain cancer. In this interview, she describes what happened after she and her daughter were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. Then we hear from their lawyer, who helped secure their release from detention.

SARAAIDA BELTRÁN RODRÍGUEZ: [translated] I crossed the river. I ended up in McAllen at the detention center. I was interviewed on video, and the man that interviewed me did ask me, and all I got to say was about the situation with my daughter. They informed me that I had a deportation and that they weren’t going to be able to help me.

When I arrived at Karnes, I was told to tell them everything at an interview there, and I told them about my daughter’s case. They encouraged me to tell them the whole story. And I did. And they did examine her to see how she was, just like they do to all the children, just a normal physical examination. And I thought that they were going to help me by having a specialist examine her, but they were not able to, because of—I think maybe because it was really costly. And I kept asking for that and expecting some sort of help in that area, but I didn’t get any.

I did notice that her left arm, the movement was very limited, and her feet were falling asleep. And I thought that it was because we were in a small space and she wasn’t getting out. And I could see that she was very stressed about being locked in there. And she was crying every night. And she would ask, "When are we leaving? Why are we here? When are we going to get out?" And I saw her suffer a lot, and it was devastating.

KATELINCOLN-GOLDFINCH: My name is Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. I’m an immigration lawyer, and I’m representing Sara and Nayely in their immigration proceedings. I was contacted by the UT Immigration Clinic about midway through August this year regarding Sara and Nayely’s case. They had discovered that Sara and Nayely were detained and that Nayely had a malignant brain tumor and was not receiving treatment. The UT clinic had sent a letter to immigration asking for Nayely’s release and had not received a response, and then they passed the case onto me to take over pro bono representation to see if I could maybe get them out.

The first thing I did was have an MRI report translated. Sara had an MRI report that was two years old. And we discovered that her situation was very dire. She had not only a growing malignant brain tumor, but she also had a shunt installed in her brain that was to drain fluid, and it could have malfunctioned at any time. We weren’t sure how it was operating. And if it did malfunction, she could have severe brain damage or not survive. And so, it was very, very distressing once I learned that that was the situation and that Nayely was not receiving care.

And when I didn’t receive any response from ICE after my inquiries, we decided to do a media campaign. So I partnered with Grassroots Leadership, and we issued a press release, and Grassroots Leadership mobilized their base to start calling ICE and making inquiries. And about two days after that campaign, I got a call from the deportation officer that Sara and Nayely were going to be released under parole. They weren’t required to pay a bond. And as far as I know, this is the only case out of Karnes where a parole has been obtained.

AMYGOODMAN: That was immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch and her client Sara Aida Beltrán Rodríguez, who was, until recently, one of the 500 women held in the new family detention center in Karnes City, an hour south of San Antonio, along with her little daughter Nayely. Nayely is now undergoing evaluation at the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas in Austin. This comes as other immigrant women imprisoned at the Karnes facility have accused guards of sexually assaulting them. Special thanks to Renée Feltz for that report.

A federal complaint filed last week says guards are promising women help with their immigration cases in return for sexual favors. Meanwhile, immigration officials have announced plans for a new 2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley, Texas, another town not far from San Antonio.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Javier Maldonado is an immigration and civil rights attorney based in San Antonio. His law firm joined the MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the University of Texas School of Law; and Human Rights First in filing the complaint last week with the Department of Homeland Security over "serious allegations of substantial, ongoing sexual abuse" at the Karnes County facility. They’ve also filed a complaint over poor conditions there. And Cristina Parker is immigration projects coordinator for Grassroots Leadership and co-author of their new report, "For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making Millions by Locking Up Refugee Families."

Welcome both to you here in San Antonio. I want to discuss the report we just heard about this mother and her daughter, her daughter who she brought into the United States to deal with brain cancer. But this latest allegations, Javier Maldonado, why don’t we start there, with this complaint that you filed?

JAVIERMALDONADO: Sure, sure. We, a group of attorneys and myself, started visiting the facility to render pro bono assistance to the families there, the moms and children. And we began to hear complaints of women being taken out in the middle of the night, that women had been offered money, that they had been offered promises of help with their immigration cases, and that many of these women were seen either being fondled or kissing with the guards. These are particularly vulnerable women, who have traveled a long journey, escaping violence and domestic violence, in many cases, their home countries. And they were subjected to these sorts of sexual coercion and sexual abuse. And for that reason—

AMYGOODMAN: And their fear if they don’t give in?

JAVIERMALDONADO: That’s right. Well, you know, and the fear that they don’t give in, and they have very little in that facility. There were—our other complaint was about the conditions and there not being enough food for the families and the children. And so, if you are being promised a little bit of money, if you’re being promised access to kitchen, if you’re being promised extra milk, you know, that is a terrible condition for families to be living in.

AMYGOODMAN: And talk about the conditions at the prison.

JAVIERMALDONADO: Yes. We also were interviewing the families and learning that, for example, toddlers, who need to crawl, were being restricted from crawling, that there weren’t toys or books for the children in their cells, because, let’s be honest, regardless of what the sign says on the outside, that it is a residential center, it is a jail. There are bars. It is surrounded by barbed wire. These women are not getting out. These children are not getting out. In the hot Texas sun, there are very, very few places to play. So when we were visiting them in August and in September, the saddest thing was that that was the only opportunity for the children to come into the visiting area and play with the toys. It’s when their moms were meeting with attorneys. This is not a place where families should be held. This is not a place where kids should be held.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you tell us more about Nayely, this little girl we just met in Renée’s report?

JAVIERMALDONADO: Right. I didn’t represent her. My friend Kate represented her. She has a very serious medical condition. The facility at Karnes just is not equipped to handle these sorts of medical problems.

AMYGOODMAN: She’s seven years old.

JAVIERMALDONADO: She’s seven years old. It took a media campaign and pleadings from the community to finally force or persuade Homeland Security to release this mom and child. It shouldn’t take a media campaign to get medical attention. Nayely is one person that fortunately was released from the facility, but there are other children suffering other conditions—asthma—

AMYGOODMAN: You’ve represented other children.

JAVIERMALDONADO: Yes, yes. You know, children who are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, because they were threatened, they were beaten; women who were raped in their home country. This is not a facility that’s affording—that’s providing the care that these families need.

AMYGOODMAN: Javier, how old is your youngest client?

JAVIERMALDONADO: The youngest one, he was just released on Friday, two years old.

AMYGOODMAN: And what was his story? How long was he held in the facility?

JAVIERMALDONADO: He was held for approximately eight weeks.

AMYGOODMAN: With his mother.

JAVIERMALDONADO: With his mother, he and his five-year-old brother were held in that facility.

AMYGOODMAN: What is the alternative?

JAVIERMALDONADO: The alternative is what was done in the past, which was parents—the families were given an immigration hearing to come and report. If the government believes that that is insufficient, if—guarantees that the families will show up, there are other alternatives. There’s electronic monitoring. There is, for example, requiring the family to report on a weekly basis, either in person or by phone. There’s other things that this administration could have done short of putting mothers and children behind bars.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re also joined by Cristina Parker. She has a new report out called "For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making MIllions by Locking Up Refugee Families." Talk about who runs Karnes.

CRISTINAPARKER: Sure. The GEO Group is the private prison company that is contracted to run the Karnes County family detention center. And they have a long track record of abuse and neglect and misconduct in their facilities. It should be no surprise to anyone, actually, that sexual abuse and denial of medical treatment happened almost as soon as the facility was opened.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you give more examples of what you have found?

CRISTINAPARKER: Sure. You know, one of the things that we see is that this misconduct is really persistent. For instance, in the Walnut Grove juvenile center in Mississippi, guards frequently used beatings and violence and sexual assault against the boys who are held there. They also retaliated a lot against people when they complained. So the boys would complain about their treatment, and they’d be put into solitary confinement. So, if you look many miles away at a facility in Pecos, Texas, called the Reeves detention center, the same thing happened. A man who had—who suffered from epilepsy complained of his lack of medical treatment, and he was put into solitary confinement. He spent a month there before he died of complications of a seizure alone. It actually caused a riot in the prison.

AMYGOODMAN: How are these facilities placed? How are they planned? Is there community input?

CRISTINAPARKER: There’s no community input when these facilities are planned. And they’re placed in really remote areas. Karnes is a little bit away from where we’re sitting right now, but there’s a new one planned in Dilley, Texas, which is even more remote, further south.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about this facility? We’re talking 2,400 beds?

CRISTINAPARKER: Yeah, Dilley, it’s really shocking. It can’t really be overstated how shocking and how big this detention center is going to be. Once it—

AMYGOODMAN: How big is Karnes?

CRISTINAPARKER: Karnes is holding 532 people. It is rumored that they want to expand it to maybe double. But even then, Dilley dwarfs it. You know, Dilley is going to be 2,400 beds, the largest single immigrant detention center in the country, dwarfing all the others. And this is where they’re going to hold women and children. I think, you know, it’s shocking.

AMYGOODMAN: Will this be run by GEO?

CRISTINAPARKER: No, the Dilley center is rumored to be run by CCA, and CCA is the Corrections Corporation of America, the same company that ran the disgraced T. Don Hutto family detention center, which is in Taylor, Texas. And the thing that’s so shocking there is that we’re seeing the exact same things be repeated. In Hutto, we heard reports of guards threatening children for being children—for playing, for being loud—with separation from their parents. That’s the exact same thing we heard when we went to Karnes recently, and it’s a persistent problem. Another problem is women and children are losing weight. You know, imagine an infant losing weight because the food is so poor. That’s exactly what we heard at Hutto under CCA, and it’s exactlywhat we’re hearing at Karnes under GEO.

AMYGOODMAN: And what is the rationale for these private corporations to come in and run these prisons, Javier Maldonado?

JAVIERMALDONADO: Well, what is the—profit. It’s to make money. The government pays them on a per-day basis, whether it’s filled or not. And the longer they keep people there, the more money they make. Why do they place them where they do, in Karnes or in Dilley? Because there are no attorneys there. Because no one can get to them. Because it’s just in remote places where nobody will see them, and we don’t have to think about them.

AMYGOODMAN: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, spokesperson Nina Pruneda said in a statement that, quote, "ICE remains committed to ensuring all individuals in our custody are held and treated in a safe, secure and humane manner. Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken," she said. While she wouldn’t comment on the specific complaints about sexual misconduct at Karnes City family detention center, she said that there is a zero-tolerance policy against sexual assault in accordance with federal regulations. Cristina Parker, your response?

CRISTINAPARKER: Yeah, my response to that is they don’t seem to learn their lesson. We’ve seen this over and over and over with GEO, with CCA, with family detention. You know, it’s no surprise to any of us. I don’t know why they would keep going back to these companies.

AMYGOODMAN: You’re organizing a protest Saturday?

CRISTINAPARKER: We are, yeah. We’re going to be outside the Karnes County family detention center at noon this Saturday. We invite people to come with us and protest against this shameful practice, this inhumane practice of holding people there. And, you know, we’re not going to stop. Our hope is to stop the Dilley contract, as well.

AMYGOODMAN: Is it set in stone? Do you think there is a possibility that the Dilley contract, the 2,400-bed facility, might be stopped?

CRISTINAPARKER: You know, I don’t like to believe that. I really think that we can stop it. I think you know, community outcry and litigation ended family detention at Hutto, and I think we’re going to do it again.

AMYGOODMAN: Javier Maldonado, this is the Obama administration. He has been called the deporter-in-chief by the mainstream organizations of immigrants rights groups, more deportations under the Obama administration than we’ve ever seen under a president.

JAVIERMALDONADO: That’s right.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re at over, what, two million mark? We’ve passed that mark?

JAVIERMALDONADO: I think it has been at least 300,000 every year, over 300,000 every year, deportations.

AMYGOODMAN: What advice do you have for President Obama? What do you think needs to be done right now?

JAVIERMALDONADO: I don’t think—whether it’s him or his officials, I don’t think they appreciate the seriousness of the problem and what they’re causing, the injuries that they’re causing to families and children. Locking them up—

AMYGOODMAN: How many deportations a day?

JAVIERMALDONADO: A day from Karnes or?

AMYGOODMAN: Overall. Do you know that number?

JAVIERMALDONADO: Well, if it’s 300,000 a year, it’s at least 10,000 a month. You know, the figures are pretty large. And so, I don’t think they appreciate the seriousness of the problems of detaining mothers and children. We can understand why adult men would be detained or why even adult women might be detained, but detaining mothers and children has crossed the line between what is appropriate immigration policy and just plain punitive policies.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, and we will link to all reports. Javier Maldonado is an immigration and civil rights attorney here in San Antonio. Cristina Parker with Grassroots Leadership. We’ll link to that report, "For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Corporations Making MIllions by Locking Up Refugee Families."

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’re broadcasting from Trinity University in San Antonio from TigerTV. When we come back, we’ll talk more about what’s happening here in San Antonio and particularly talk about the issue of fracking. Stay with us.

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Wed, 08 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400Big Tobacco's Child Workers: Young Laborers Endure Health Risks, Harsh Conditions on U.S. Farmshttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/8/big_tobaccos_child_workers_young_laborers
tag:democracynow.org,2014-09-08:en/story/b5d581 AMY GOODMAN : Tobacco companies cannot legally sell cigarettes to children, but they&#8217;re reportedly profiting from child labor. That&#8217;s the conclusion of a recent investigation by The New York Times that uncovers the dangers faced by thousands of children working on tobacco farms in the United States. Headlined &quot;Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields,&quot; the piece reveals child laborers frequently catch what is known as &quot;green tobacco sickness,&quot; or nicotine poisoning, which can cause vomiting, dizziness, irregular heart rates, among other symptoms. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic pesticides since their bodies are still developing. The risks include nervous system damage, reproductive impacts and cancer. Many of the kids are immigrants, or children of immigrants, and routinely work 60-hour work weeks, without overtime pay. Tobacco workers can absorb as much nicotine as if they were actually smoking simply by handling wet tobacco leaves.
Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch spoke to several child tobacco workers who described what it&#8217;s like to work on tobacco farms.
CHILD TOBACCO WORKER 1: Your neck starts hurting, your shoulders are hurting, and it&#8217;s just like your body wants to give up.
CHILD TOBACCO WORKER 2: It feels like you can&#8217;t feel your legs, and you&#8217;ve got to take breaks.
HECTOR : I use the bathroom before I leave, and I just wait &#8217;til I get back here. We start working at 6:00, and we get out at 6:00. And I just wait &#8217;til I get home.
CHILD TOBACCO WORKER 3: It feels horrible, because you feel like there&#8217;s no air. And then you look down, you look beside, and then you&#8217;re only halfway done. And you feel like it&#8217;s time for us to get out, because you feel like you&#8217;re going to die in there.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s a clip from a video by Human Rights Watch, which accompanied its recent report , &quot;US: Child Workers in Danger on Tobacco Farms.&quot; Under U.S. law, tobacco farms can hire workers at much younger ages, for longer hours and under more hazardous conditions than in almost any other sector. Federal law allows children as young as 12 years old to work on farms for unlimited hours, as long as it doesn&#8217;t conflict with their school attendance. Tobacco growers say the practice of using young teenagers is rare, but The New York Times found the practice is still prevalent.
Well, for more, we&#8217;re joined by Steven Greenhouse, the longtime labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times , author of the exposé , &quot;Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields.&quot;
Steven Greenhouse, welcome back to Democracy Now!
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : Nice to be here.
AMY GOODMAN : Explain more what you found.
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : So, I went to North Carolina, and I went to the eastern part of the state and visited many tobacco farms and met many young kids who were working in tobacco—you know, 13-year-old Saray Cambray Alvarez, 16-year-old Ana Flores, 15-year-old Edinson [Bueso]. And, you know, it is fairly prevalent. And I was shocked that a lot of these kids said, &quot;I work in the fields from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.&quot; Ana Flores told me she wakes up at 5:00 in the morning, leaves for the fields at 6:00, gets to the fields at 7:00, works until 7:00 p.m., sometimes 8:00 p.m., sometimes 8:30. And a lot of these kids told me they get really sick some of the time. The nicotine—when there&#8217;s a lot of dew, when it rains, the nicotine in the plants will kind of dissolve into the water, and when it gets on people&#8217;s skin, that&#8217;s when they get this nicotine poisoning, green tobacco sickness. And they throw up. They get nauseous. They get dizzy. This one 15-year-old girl, Esmeralda Juarez, told me that at one point she was feeling so sick she asked her supervisor, &quot;I really need just to sit for five or 10 minutes. I&#8217;m feeling nauseous.&quot; And she told me that unless she kept on working, he was going to fire her. So it&#8217;s a very difficult, shall I say, road to hoe. You know, it&#8217;s very difficult for these kids. It&#8217;s very difficult for many workers. Now, a lot of—
AMY GOODMAN : Even getting access to water.
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : So, a lot of the workers say the days are too long. It&#8217;s very, very hot. You know, in North Carolina in the summer, it can be 90, 95, even 100. And some of the workers I interviewed said that they&#8217;ll work &#8217;til—they&#8217;ll work across the field. They&#8217;ll be dying of thirst, so it might take another hour for them to, you know, weed or pluck unwanted flowers off the plants, and take them an hour to get back to the trucks where the water was. And they say they felt extremely thirsty, extremely uncomfortable.
AMY GOODMAN : Human Rights Watch found many child tobacco workers are expected to operate dangerous machinery, lift heavy loads, climb to perilous heights to hang tobacco for drying. One boy, who preferred not to be named, described the dangers he faces on the job.
CHILD TOBACCO WORKER 4: [translated] Almost all of us climb up onto the wooden beams, that are 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-meters high. Sometimes you can step in the wrong place and fall all the way down. If you suffer an accident, you can even lose your life. It&#8217;s very dangerous.
AMY GOODMAN : I mean, Steven Greenhouse, this is dangerous for adults, let alone children. You write, &quot;Opponents of child labor note [that] Brazil, India and some other tobacco-producing nations already prohibit anyone under 18 from working on tobacco farms.&quot; What happened here?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : So, three years ago, then-Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed some broad new restrictions against child labor. You know, she proposed that no children under 16 work in tobacco fields. And as part of that package, she said no children under 16 should work with power-driven equipment, like tractors. She also proposed that no children under 18 work in grain silos. You know, there were some horrendous stories about kids being crushed to death in grain silos. Then, as often happens in the United States, there was a huge backlash by industry, by farmers saying, &quot;This is terrible. We need these workers. It&#8217;s important to have young workers learning agriculture. And if you ban them, it&#8217;s going to really hurt the next generation of people in farming.&quot; And the Obama administration—this was now in 2012 during his re-election campaign, and basically, the Obama administration caved and withdrew Secretary Solis&#8217;s proposal. So now what&#8217;s happening, Amy, is some advocates are trying to kind of refloat this idea just with regard to tobacco, thinking that in President Obama&#8217;s last two years of office, with all these elections and politics behind him, he might have the courage to go forward with this ban on tobacco workers under age 16.
AMY GOODMAN : Let me read the Obama administration comment, a statement, the press release that it issued. The Obama administration issued a press statement that read: &quot;The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations.&quot; Your response, Steven Greenhouse?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : So, I should have explained, Amy. So, after Secretary Solis proposed this, all these farmers said, you know, &quot;We run family farms. We need our 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 14-year-olds able to work on the farms.&quot; And the Obama administration has explicitly exempted family farms and kids on those—you know, and children on those farms from these rules. Nonetheless, there was such a firestorm against these proposals, you know, not just by agricultural interests, but by many Republican lawmakers, and then some Democratic lawmakers in the farm states also got very worried that it might hurt their re-election, and President Obama thought it might cause him to lose certain states. So he basically—you know, I use the word &quot;caved.&quot; And he said, &quot;We&#8217;re not going to really consider these proposals for the remainder of my administration,&quot; which is pretty strong language. But Human Rights Watch and other groups are really pushing now and saying, you know, &quot;Tobacco work is so unhealthy for kids. Let&#8217;s make this one exception and bar this in your last two years of office.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : Let&#8217;s turn to Graham Boyd, the executive vice president for the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina. He told you most tobacco farmers go beyond what is required in terms of labor compliance, saying, &quot;There is absolutely zero benefit in mistreating farm workers.&quot; He went on to acknowledge the danger of nicotine poisoning and other tough conditions in the fields, saying, quote, &quot;No one is going to say it&#8217;s a day at the beach.&quot; Steven Greenhouse?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : Yes. So, I was surprised when I interviewed some of the folks from the Tobacco Growers Associations. You know, I wasn&#8217;t surprised that they said, &quot;We hardly hire anyone under 16, anyone under 18.&quot; But when I asked them, you know, &quot;What would you think about proposals to ban kids under 16?&quot; they said they were open to it, even kids under 18. They&#8217;re facing a lot of pressure from one cigarette company, which has really taken the lead on this. Philip Morris International has adopted a proposal far, far stricter than the U.S. government regulations. You know, Philip Morris International bars any of its growers from using people, workers under age 18, and it has banned, barred 20 growers in the United States over the past year for using workers under age 18. R.J. Reynolds and Altria, you know, the two other giant cigarette companies, have not adopted proposals nearly as strong. They&#8217;re saying, &quot;We hate illegal child labor.&quot; Everyone hates illegal child labor. And they say, &quot;We think kids under 18 should not be doing hazardous work.&quot; But they—you know, Reynolds and Altria don&#8217;t see regular tobacco work in the fields, where people are getting green tobacco sickness, as hazardous.
AMY GOODMAN : What was Hilda Solis&#8217;s response herself, the secretary of labor, who pushed so hard for this?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : I tried to interview Secretary Solis on this, but I didn&#8217;t hear back. I think she—you know, I think she was pretty courageous in pushing for this, but I think she doesn&#8217;t want to be seen as criticizing the Obama administration right now.
AMY GOODMAN : And how many children do you think are working in the fields in the States?
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : I think certainly several hundred. Some people say thousands. I think that might be a high number, but certainly several hundred. And there are a lot of kids, 13, 14, 15, working. I interviewed a lot of 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds who said, &quot;I began at the age of 12.&quot; I interviewed this 13-year-old, Saray, whose picture is on the front page. I interviewed her 22-year-old sister. The 22-year-old sister said, &quot;I&#8217;ve been doing this since the age of 12.&quot; So it really is quite prevalent.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to, before we go, get to another piece you recently wrote about wage theft. Talk about what that is and where it&#8217;s happening.
STEVEN GREENHOUSE : So, when I was in North Carolina, it&#8217;s funny, I was interviewing some folks, and some of the workers were saying, &quot;I suffered wage theft.&quot; I said, &quot;What is wage theft?&quot; So, you know, many, many employers violate minimum-wage laws or don&#8217;t pay time and a half when workers work more than 40 hours a week. Or when workers work, say, 45, 50 hours a week and should be getting overtime, some hours will magically disappear from their electronic timecards and will just say they worked 39 or 40 hours, so they don&#8217;t get overtime. Sometimes employers will illegally steal tips that waiters, waitresses, bartenders deserve, and it&#8217;s illegal for managers to take tips. And all those different schemes to deprive workers of their rightful wages, that&#8217;s been called wage theft. And there&#8217;s a growing push by advocates to get not just the U.S. Labor Department, but state labor departments, to get much more aggressive about it.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you very much, Steven Greenhouse, author of &quot;Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields,&quot; his latest piece , also author of the book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker .&quot; He&#8217;s the longtime labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times . We&#8217;ll link to the articles on wage theft and children working in the tobacco fields of the United States at democracynow.org. AMYGOODMAN: Tobacco companies cannot legally sell cigarettes to children, but they’re reportedly profiting from child labor. That’s the conclusion of a recent investigation by The New York Times that uncovers the dangers faced by thousands of children working on tobacco farms in the United States. Headlined "Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields," the piece reveals child laborers frequently catch what is known as "green tobacco sickness," or nicotine poisoning, which can cause vomiting, dizziness, irregular heart rates, among other symptoms. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic pesticides since their bodies are still developing. The risks include nervous system damage, reproductive impacts and cancer. Many of the kids are immigrants, or children of immigrants, and routinely work 60-hour work weeks, without overtime pay. Tobacco workers can absorb as much nicotine as if they were actually smoking simply by handling wet tobacco leaves.

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch spoke to several child tobacco workers who described what it’s like to work on tobacco farms.

CHILDTOBACCOWORKER 2: It feels like you can’t feel your legs, and you’ve got to take breaks.

HECTOR: I use the bathroom before I leave, and I just wait ’til I get back here. We start working at 6:00, and we get out at 6:00. And I just wait ’til I get home.

CHILDTOBACCOWORKER 3: It feels horrible, because you feel like there’s no air. And then you look down, you look beside, and then you’re only halfway done. And you feel like it’s time for us to get out, because you feel like you’re going to die in there.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s a clip from a video by Human Rights Watch, which accompanied its recent report, "US: Child Workers in Danger on Tobacco Farms." Under U.S. law, tobacco farms can hire workers at much younger ages, for longer hours and under more hazardous conditions than in almost any other sector. Federal law allows children as young as 12 years old to work on farms for unlimited hours, as long as it doesn’t conflict with their school attendance. Tobacco growers say the practice of using young teenagers is rare, but The New York Times found the practice is still prevalent.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Steven Greenhouse, the longtime labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times, author of the exposé, "Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields."

Steven Greenhouse, welcome back to Democracy Now!

STEVENGREENHOUSE: Nice to be here.

AMYGOODMAN: Explain more what you found.

STEVENGREENHOUSE: So, I went to North Carolina, and I went to the eastern part of the state and visited many tobacco farms and met many young kids who were working in tobacco—you know, 13-year-old Saray Cambray Alvarez, 16-year-old Ana Flores, 15-year-old Edinson [Bueso]. And, you know, it is fairly prevalent. And I was shocked that a lot of these kids said, "I work in the fields from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m." Ana Flores told me she wakes up at 5:00 in the morning, leaves for the fields at 6:00, gets to the fields at 7:00, works until 7:00 p.m., sometimes 8:00 p.m., sometimes 8:30. And a lot of these kids told me they get really sick some of the time. The nicotine—when there’s a lot of dew, when it rains, the nicotine in the plants will kind of dissolve into the water, and when it gets on people’s skin, that’s when they get this nicotine poisoning, green tobacco sickness. And they throw up. They get nauseous. They get dizzy. This one 15-year-old girl, Esmeralda Juarez, told me that at one point she was feeling so sick she asked her supervisor, "I really need just to sit for five or 10 minutes. I’m feeling nauseous." And she told me that unless she kept on working, he was going to fire her. So it’s a very difficult, shall I say, road to hoe. You know, it’s very difficult for these kids. It’s very difficult for many workers. Now, a lot of—

AMYGOODMAN: Even getting access to water.

STEVENGREENHOUSE: So, a lot of the workers say the days are too long. It’s very, very hot. You know, in North Carolina in the summer, it can be 90, 95, even 100. And some of the workers I interviewed said that they’ll work ’til—they’ll work across the field. They’ll be dying of thirst, so it might take another hour for them to, you know, weed or pluck unwanted flowers off the plants, and take them an hour to get back to the trucks where the water was. And they say they felt extremely thirsty, extremely uncomfortable.

AMYGOODMAN: Human Rights Watch found many child tobacco workers are expected to operate dangerous machinery, lift heavy loads, climb to perilous heights to hang tobacco for drying. One boy, who preferred not to be named, described the dangers he faces on the job.

CHILDTOBACCOWORKER 4: [translated] Almost all of us climb up onto the wooden beams, that are 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-meters high. Sometimes you can step in the wrong place and fall all the way down. If you suffer an accident, you can even lose your life. It’s very dangerous.

AMYGOODMAN: I mean, Steven Greenhouse, this is dangerous for adults, let alone children. You write, "Opponents of child labor note [that] Brazil, India and some other tobacco-producing nations already prohibit anyone under 18 from working on tobacco farms." What happened here?

STEVENGREENHOUSE: So, three years ago, then-Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis proposed some broad new restrictions against child labor. You know, she proposed that no children under 16 work in tobacco fields. And as part of that package, she said no children under 16 should work with power-driven equipment, like tractors. She also proposed that no children under 18 work in grain silos. You know, there were some horrendous stories about kids being crushed to death in grain silos. Then, as often happens in the United States, there was a huge backlash by industry, by farmers saying, "This is terrible. We need these workers. It’s important to have young workers learning agriculture. And if you ban them, it’s going to really hurt the next generation of people in farming." And the Obama administration—this was now in 2012 during his re-election campaign, and basically, the Obama administration caved and withdrew Secretary Solis’s proposal. So now what’s happening, Amy, is some advocates are trying to kind of refloat this idea just with regard to tobacco, thinking that in President Obama’s last two years of office, with all these elections and politics behind him, he might have the courage to go forward with this ban on tobacco workers under age 16.

AMYGOODMAN: Let me read the Obama administration comment, a statement, the press release that it issued. The Obama administration issued a press statement that read: "The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations." Your response, Steven Greenhouse?

STEVENGREENHOUSE: So, I should have explained, Amy. So, after Secretary Solis proposed this, all these farmers said, you know, "We run family farms. We need our 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds and 14-year-olds able to work on the farms." And the Obama administration has explicitly exempted family farms and kids on those—you know, and children on those farms from these rules. Nonetheless, there was such a firestorm against these proposals, you know, not just by agricultural interests, but by many Republican lawmakers, and then some Democratic lawmakers in the farm states also got very worried that it might hurt their re-election, and President Obama thought it might cause him to lose certain states. So he basically—you know, I use the word "caved." And he said, "We’re not going to really consider these proposals for the remainder of my administration," which is pretty strong language. But Human Rights Watch and other groups are really pushing now and saying, you know, "Tobacco work is so unhealthy for kids. Let’s make this one exception and bar this in your last two years of office."

AMYGOODMAN: Let’s turn to Graham Boyd, the executive vice president for the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina. He told you most tobacco farmers go beyond what is required in terms of labor compliance, saying, "There is absolutely zero benefit in mistreating farm workers." He went on to acknowledge the danger of nicotine poisoning and other tough conditions in the fields, saying, quote, "No one is going to say it’s a day at the beach." Steven Greenhouse?

STEVENGREENHOUSE: Yes. So, I was surprised when I interviewed some of the folks from the Tobacco Growers Associations. You know, I wasn’t surprised that they said, "We hardly hire anyone under 16, anyone under 18." But when I asked them, you know, "What would you think about proposals to ban kids under 16?" they said they were open to it, even kids under 18. They’re facing a lot of pressure from one cigarette company, which has really taken the lead on this. Philip Morris International has adopted a proposal far, far stricter than the U.S. government regulations. You know, Philip Morris International bars any of its growers from using people, workers under age 18, and it has banned, barred 20 growers in the United States over the past year for using workers under age 18. R.J. Reynolds and Altria, you know, the two other giant cigarette companies, have not adopted proposals nearly as strong. They’re saying, "We hate illegal child labor." Everyone hates illegal child labor. And they say, "We think kids under 18 should not be doing hazardous work." But they—you know, Reynolds and Altria don’t see regular tobacco work in the fields, where people are getting green tobacco sickness, as hazardous.

AMYGOODMAN: What was Hilda Solis’s response herself, the secretary of labor, who pushed so hard for this?

STEVENGREENHOUSE: I tried to interview Secretary Solis on this, but I didn’t hear back. I think she—you know, I think she was pretty courageous in pushing for this, but I think she doesn’t want to be seen as criticizing the Obama administration right now.

AMYGOODMAN: And how many children do you think are working in the fields in the States?

STEVENGREENHOUSE: I think certainly several hundred. Some people say thousands. I think that might be a high number, but certainly several hundred. And there are a lot of kids, 13, 14, 15, working. I interviewed a lot of 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds who said, "I began at the age of 12." I interviewed this 13-year-old, Saray, whose picture is on the front page. I interviewed her 22-year-old sister. The 22-year-old sister said, "I’ve been doing this since the age of 12." So it really is quite prevalent.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to, before we go, get to another piece you recently wrote about wage theft. Talk about what that is and where it’s happening.

STEVENGREENHOUSE: So, when I was in North Carolina, it’s funny, I was interviewing some folks, and some of the workers were saying, "I suffered wage theft." I said, "What is wage theft?" So, you know, many, many employers violate minimum-wage laws or don’t pay time and a half when workers work more than 40 hours a week. Or when workers work, say, 45, 50 hours a week and should be getting overtime, some hours will magically disappear from their electronic timecards and will just say they worked 39 or 40 hours, so they don’t get overtime. Sometimes employers will illegally steal tips that waiters, waitresses, bartenders deserve, and it’s illegal for managers to take tips. And all those different schemes to deprive workers of their rightful wages, that’s been called wage theft. And there’s a growing push by advocates to get not just the U.S. Labor Department, but state labor departments, to get much more aggressive about it.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you very much, Steven Greenhouse, author of "Just 13, and Working Risky 12-Hour Shifts in the Tobacco Fields," his latest piece, also author of the book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker." He’s the longtime labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times. We’ll link to the articles on wage theft and children working in the tobacco fields of the United States at democracynow.org.

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Mon, 08 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400As 145 Arrested in White House Protest, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez Urges Obama to Halt Mass Deportationshttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/29/as_145_arrested_in_white_house
tag:democracynow.org,2014-08-29:en/story/6a644b JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Immigrants and their allies held protests in more than a dozen cities Thursday to mark what they called the National Day to Fight for Families. They want President Obama to take executive action to stem his record level of deportations. About 145 people were arrested in front of the White House after they laid red carnations over photos of deported loved ones. Among those who marched in support were Jonathan Perez and Jesus Hernandez.
JESUS HERNANDEZ : [translated] I want Obama to stop deportations and come up with a good plan for everybody. For everybody, not just for a few over here and a few over there. No, take the reins and come up with a plan. Yes or no. He&#8217;s the president, and if not, he should leave.
JONATHAN PEREZ : I’m an immigrant, and I achieved the DACA , so I can manage to work legally now, but I&#8217;m the only one in my family, and it saddens me to know that I went over half of what my mom makes in two weeks. So, I want her to have the opportunity to make as much money as I do, and no matter what kind of work she&#8217;s doing. So, you know, I feel like I need to be out here in support of everyone, because I want everyone to have equal rights.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Also on Thursday, President Obama called on Congress yet again to help address immigration reform. But he suggested that he would take executive action if it is the only way to address the situation.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : I have been very clear about the fact that our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. And my preference continues to be that Congress act. I don&#8217;t think anybody thinks that Congress is going to act in the short term, but hope springs eternal that after the midterm elections, they may act. The good news is we&#8217;ve started to make some progress. I mean, what we&#8217;ve seen so far is that throughout the summer the number of apprehensions have been decreasing. Maybe that&#8217;s counterintuitive, but that&#8217;s a good thing, because that means that fewer folks are coming across.
AMY GOODMAN : Executive steps President Obama could take include deferring deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants, as well as providing new green cards for high-tech workers and for relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
Well, for more, we&#8217;re joined by Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois. He&#8217;s in Chicago, where this week he met with immigration advocates to prepare for a possible announcement from the White House. Congressmember Gutiérrez chairs the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Congressman, welcome back to Democracy Now! What do you think has to happen right now? A hundred forty-five people, at least, were arrested yesterday in Washington.
REP . LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, look, yesterday was a national day of action, and they&#8217;re responding because each and every day that we wait, another thousand people are deported. Every week, dozens of Americans&#8217; children are left orphaned, because they lose a mom or a dad. I mean, our broken immigration system has an impact on the immigrant community each and every day. And that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m heartened to hear that the president said—look, for three months—April, May, June—I went down to House floor and gave speech after speech, alerting the Republican majority that if we did not act by the 4th of July, the president would. And indeed, the president said, the first week of—the last week of June, that he was going to act. Why? Because Speaker Boehner called him up and said, &quot;We&#8217;re not going to do anything.&quot; That&#8217;s after the Republican majority said that they had a set of principles, said that they were ready to work, said that they were ready to move forward.
I and many others worked with them and said, &quot;We understand you&#8217;re the majority. Tell us the outline of the proposal, but let&#8217;s get something done.&quot; They said they wanted to do it in parts. You know, they didn&#8217;t want to do one bill at one time. We said, &quot;OK, let&#8217;s begin on the parts.&quot; They said, &quot;Everybody can&#8217;t be a citizen right away.&quot; We said, &quot;OK, let&#8217;s see who does become a citizen and what are the steps for the others.&quot; They said, &quot;Well, we can&#8217;t have the Senate bill as a model.&quot; We said, &quot;Well, let&#8217;s create our own model, and let&#8217;s come up with one better.&quot; But each and every time the Republicans came up with a demand that was acquiesced to, in the end they just simply walked away.
So, look, the president yesterday and I prefer a legislative solution, because what the president can do, Amy, is never going to be as great and as fulfilling and as permanent as what can be accomplished legislatively. So I want a legislative solution, but the Republicans have said they&#8217;re not going to give us one. So, then the president needs to act and use his executive authority to act.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Luis Gutiérrez, what do you make of the threats by some Republican leaders in the House and the Senate that if the president does act—and they believe he would be acting unconstitutionally—that they&#8217;re prepared to essentially shut down the government by holding up approval of the budget that Congress must pass before the beginning of October?
REP . LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, look, look, Juan, first of all, I believe the president is going to act in the next 30 days. That&#8217;s my hope. What would stop him from acting? Well, probably because there are some Democrats that are in some contested senatorial races prior, in Arkansas and others, that don&#8217;t want him to act until after the election. But I hope Democrats say, &quot;You know, we have principles, we have values, and we&#8217;ll put those principles and good public policy ahead of politics,&quot; because one of the problems Democrats have had in the past is we&#8217;re for the immigrants, but we don&#8217;t want to expend too much political capital in defending them or lose too many legislative seats, and certainly not our majority. So, I would hope he would put good public policy ahead of politics. Having said that, look, the Republicans—let&#8217;s say Obama does it, Juan, and he says it in—it would take three to four months, from the moment he makes—right?—the decision to the time that it can be implemented, because you&#8217;ve got regulations to put in place, paperwork, you&#8217;ve got administration to put in place, for millions of people to be able to apply to the American government so they&#8217;d be free from deportation and given a work permit for a couple of years.
Now, having said that, I think what we need to understand then is the Republicans can always come back to the table, which is one of the things that the president said yesterday. He said, you know, hope is eternal—springs eternal; maybe they&#8217;ll come back in the lame-duck session, and we can talk again. So they can always come back. But Republicans have to stop saying, &quot;We won&#8217;t do anything.&quot; There is a crisis in the immigrant community. It is a damaging, hurtful, and many times leads to deaths in our community. And so, you know what? If you don&#8217;t want to act, and there&#8217;s a crisis, we have a responsibility to use the powers that we do have at the legislative branch to help people. What can Obama do? Look, he can&#8217;t do what the Senate bill would do, but what he can do is say, &quot;I want to prioritize deportations in a way that is meaningful to our national security and that respects the bonds of families in the immigrant community that have been devastated because of our broken immigration system.&quot;
Let&#8217;s say, Juan, he said, &quot;You know what? Anybody that&#8217;s been in the United States&quot;—and I&#8217;m not proposing it, but let&#8217;s just say he said this—&quot;everybody who has been in the United States for 10 years or more, working, has roots in the community, maybe they&#8217;re married, has American citizen children, and has been married, and, you know, is ready to come forward and sign up and acknowledge who they are with the federal government, go through a rigorous background check to make sure they have no criminal background whatsoever, and they&#8217;ve been here 10 years.&quot; Do you know how many people that would be? Over six million people. That&#8217;s what I think the American public is going to come to understand, is that there are millions of people that have been here in the United States for over a decade and have no relief, and the Republicans will not come to the table to sensibly bring a solution. Marco Rubio, he voted for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. So it&#8217;s like the president is doing what he voted for, just not in the expansive manner that he did.
The other thing that I think that has to be clear, look, we also have to understand that maybe the president can do—I believe the president can do millions. I think he can do five to six million. And I think he can give—he can articulate a very clear legal framework for doing it. And, you know, if the Republicans, each and every time the president wants to take an action, they&#8217;re going to shut down the government, in the end they&#8217;re going to be shut out of government, if that is the only position that they have. If the president does something unconstitutional or illegal, they should use the courts. They shouldn&#8217;t make and hold hostage the rest of the people of the United States for an issue that the president—that they refuse to deal with, which they say they believe in, because I&#8217;ve talked to them, and Speaker Boehner said he wanted to do immigration reform. So they say they want to do it, but then they don&#8217;t do it, and then they say, if we do it, then they&#8217;ll shut down the government. It&#8217;s nonsense.
Look, New York Times , Wall Street Journal , AFL - CIO , Chamber of Commerce, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Jews, religious communities, broad-based opinion makers in America, all agree we need to fix our broken immigration system. And I like what Amy brought out earlier in the program, and that is that the fix is for the dishwasher and the woman that makes the bed in Chicago, but it&#8217;s also for the high-tech engineer making sure he can have their spouse here in America. It&#8217;s also for our agricultural industry. Look, farmers out there, American farmers, they need a reliable workforce and labor force that they can rely on season in and season out. And you can&#8217;t have one until you fix our broken immigration system. Seventy percent of all agricultural workers—those are the people that pick our fruit, pick our vegetables, sweat and toil, do back-breaking work in the fields across America—are undocumented. Shouldn&#8217;t they be given an opportunity? So I think if the president comes forward and says—because he&#8217;s got to pick a date, right? He can&#8217;t just say everybody who&#8217;s in the United States. I hope he picks the date of the Senate, right, so he goes back three years. With DACA , he said that the youth, the immigrant youth, had to be here by 2007, and this was 2012. He said he went back five years. He said only immigrant youth that have been here five years or longer. He&#8217;s going to have to pick a date. I don&#8217;t know what date he picks. Whatever. But even if he goes to 10 years, Juan, it&#8217;s 6.3 million people. That&#8217;s a lot of people. So, if the Republicans want to not do anything, they have to remember that Obama&#8217;s actions are going to be actions that are going to be well received throughout most of America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what&#8217;s your best guess on when he&#8217;s going to make this announcement?
REP . LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Look, here&#8217;s what he said. He said that he would make it by the end of the summer. And my hope is, notwithstanding what some Democrats have wanted him to do, and that&#8217;s to wait after the November election, I hope he keeps his word and does it by the end of the summer.
The protests that you showed earlier today were national protests. You focused on the one in Washington, D.C., but there were people in dozens of cities across America raising their voices, asking and demanding that the president take action.
Let me just say this, to Democrats specifically, and that is, we have to be a party that has values and that has principles when it comes to our immigrant community. Number one, that&#8217;s important for our party. Number two, if you just want to look at the political benefit, think one moment. It&#8217;s June 2012. President Barack Obama has a serious problem with the immigrant community. The complaints are all about his deportation. He signs DACA , right? It was executive authority that he has through Homeland Security and says, &quot;I&#8217;m not going to deport any more youth.&quot; What happens immediately after that? The country embraced it, Juan. It embraced it to the point that at the convention, the Democratic convention, in prime time, you heard one undocumented youth after another speaking from the floor of the convention to the nation. And in November, the Democrats, in the presidential election in November of 2012, got two million more Latino votes than they did in 2008 and got an increased percentage number. So, it&#8217;s good public policy, and it certainly has been demonstrated in the past that it&#8217;s good politics.
I said—when I spoke to the president, I said, &quot;Mr. President, when you do this and you show that government can be a tool for justice and for fairness, you do this for the immigrant community, let me tell you what&#8217;s going to happen. You&#8217;re going to broaden the ranks of those who care about justice and broaden the ranks of those who care about raising the minimum wage, those who care about better labor standards, those who care about women&#8217;s reproductive rights, those who care about our LGBT community. Let&#8217;s grow the progressive movement. Let&#8217;s take the actions that we need, that we can demonstrate that government can be a tool for good, for justice and for fairness. And if the Republicans want to respond, let them respond. Let them respond. Then what they&#8217;re going to find is that in America people want men and women of action and that take those actions boldly and swiftly.&quot; JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Immigrants and their allies held protests in more than a dozen cities Thursday to mark what they called the National Day to Fight for Families. They want President Obama to take executive action to stem his record level of deportations. About 145 people were arrested in front of the White House after they laid red carnations over photos of deported loved ones. Among those who marched in support were Jonathan Perez and Jesus Hernandez.

JESUSHERNANDEZ: [translated] I want Obama to stop deportations and come up with a good plan for everybody. For everybody, not just for a few over here and a few over there. No, take the reins and come up with a plan. Yes or no. He’s the president, and if not, he should leave.

JONATHANPEREZ: I’m an immigrant, and I achieved the DACA, so I can manage to work legally now, but I’m the only one in my family, and it saddens me to know that I went over half of what my mom makes in two weeks. So, I want her to have the opportunity to make as much money as I do, and no matter what kind of work she’s doing. So, you know, I feel like I need to be out here in support of everyone, because I want everyone to have equal rights.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Also on Thursday, President Obama called on Congress yet again to help address immigration reform. But he suggested that he would take executive action if it is the only way to address the situation.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: I have been very clear about the fact that our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. And my preference continues to be that Congress act. I don’t think anybody thinks that Congress is going to act in the short term, but hope springs eternal that after the midterm elections, they may act. The good news is we’ve started to make some progress. I mean, what we’ve seen so far is that throughout the summer the number of apprehensions have been decreasing. Maybe that’s counterintuitive, but that’s a good thing, because that means that fewer folks are coming across.

AMYGOODMAN: Executive steps President Obama could take include deferring deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants, as well as providing new green cards for high-tech workers and for relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez, Democrat of Illinois. He’s in Chicago, where this week he met with immigration advocates to prepare for a possible announcement from the White House. Congressmember Gutiérrez chairs the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Congressman, welcome back to Democracy Now! What do you think has to happen right now? A hundred forty-five people, at least, were arrested yesterday in Washington.

REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, look, yesterday was a national day of action, and they’re responding because each and every day that we wait, another thousand people are deported. Every week, dozens of Americans’ children are left orphaned, because they lose a mom or a dad. I mean, our broken immigration system has an impact on the immigrant community each and every day. And that’s why I’m heartened to hear that the president said—look, for three months—April, May, June—I went down to House floor and gave speech after speech, alerting the Republican majority that if we did not act by the 4th of July, the president would. And indeed, the president said, the first week of—the last week of June, that he was going to act. Why? Because Speaker Boehner called him up and said, "We’re not going to do anything." That’s after the Republican majority said that they had a set of principles, said that they were ready to work, said that they were ready to move forward.

I and many others worked with them and said, "We understand you’re the majority. Tell us the outline of the proposal, but let’s get something done." They said they wanted to do it in parts. You know, they didn’t want to do one bill at one time. We said, "OK, let’s begin on the parts." They said, "Everybody can’t be a citizen right away." We said, "OK, let’s see who does become a citizen and what are the steps for the others." They said, "Well, we can’t have the Senate bill as a model." We said, "Well, let’s create our own model, and let’s come up with one better." But each and every time the Republicans came up with a demand that was acquiesced to, in the end they just simply walked away.

So, look, the president yesterday and I prefer a legislative solution, because what the president can do, Amy, is never going to be as great and as fulfilling and as permanent as what can be accomplished legislatively. So I want a legislative solution, but the Republicans have said they’re not going to give us one. So, then the president needs to act and use his executive authority to act.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Luis Gutiérrez, what do you make of the threats by some Republican leaders in the House and the Senate that if the president does act—and they believe he would be acting unconstitutionally—that they’re prepared to essentially shut down the government by holding up approval of the budget that Congress must pass before the beginning of October?

REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, look, look, Juan, first of all, I believe the president is going to act in the next 30 days. That’s my hope. What would stop him from acting? Well, probably because there are some Democrats that are in some contested senatorial races prior, in Arkansas and others, that don’t want him to act until after the election. But I hope Democrats say, "You know, we have principles, we have values, and we’ll put those principles and good public policy ahead of politics," because one of the problems Democrats have had in the past is we’re for the immigrants, but we don’t want to expend too much political capital in defending them or lose too many legislative seats, and certainly not our majority. So, I would hope he would put good public policy ahead of politics. Having said that, look, the Republicans—let’s say Obama does it, Juan, and he says it in—it would take three to four months, from the moment he makes—right?—the decision to the time that it can be implemented, because you’ve got regulations to put in place, paperwork, you’ve got administration to put in place, for millions of people to be able to apply to the American government so they’d be free from deportation and given a work permit for a couple of years.

Now, having said that, I think what we need to understand then is the Republicans can always come back to the table, which is one of the things that the president said yesterday. He said, you know, hope is eternal—springs eternal; maybe they’ll come back in the lame-duck session, and we can talk again. So they can always come back. But Republicans have to stop saying, "We won’t do anything." There is a crisis in the immigrant community. It is a damaging, hurtful, and many times leads to deaths in our community. And so, you know what? If you don’t want to act, and there’s a crisis, we have a responsibility to use the powers that we do have at the legislative branch to help people. What can Obama do? Look, he can’t do what the Senate bill would do, but what he can do is say, "I want to prioritize deportations in a way that is meaningful to our national security and that respects the bonds of families in the immigrant community that have been devastated because of our broken immigration system."

Let’s say, Juan, he said, "You know what? Anybody that’s been in the United States"—and I’m not proposing it, but let’s just say he said this—"everybody who has been in the United States for 10 years or more, working, has roots in the community, maybe they’re married, has American citizen children, and has been married, and, you know, is ready to come forward and sign up and acknowledge who they are with the federal government, go through a rigorous background check to make sure they have no criminal background whatsoever, and they’ve been here 10 years." Do you know how many people that would be? Over six million people. That’s what I think the American public is going to come to understand, is that there are millions of people that have been here in the United States for over a decade and have no relief, and the Republicans will not come to the table to sensibly bring a solution. Marco Rubio, he voted for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. So it’s like the president is doing what he voted for, just not in the expansive manner that he did.

The other thing that I think that has to be clear, look, we also have to understand that maybe the president can do—I believe the president can do millions. I think he can do five to six million. And I think he can give—he can articulate a very clear legal framework for doing it. And, you know, if the Republicans, each and every time the president wants to take an action, they’re going to shut down the government, in the end they’re going to be shut out of government, if that is the only position that they have. If the president does something unconstitutional or illegal, they should use the courts. They shouldn’t make and hold hostage the rest of the people of the United States for an issue that the president—that they refuse to deal with, which they say they believe in, because I’ve talked to them, and Speaker Boehner said he wanted to do immigration reform. So they say they want to do it, but then they don’t do it, and then they say, if we do it, then they’ll shut down the government. It’s nonsense.

Look, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, AFL-CIO, Chamber of Commerce, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Jews, religious communities, broad-based opinion makers in America, all agree we need to fix our broken immigration system. And I like what Amy brought out earlier in the program, and that is that the fix is for the dishwasher and the woman that makes the bed in Chicago, but it’s also for the high-tech engineer making sure he can have their spouse here in America. It’s also for our agricultural industry. Look, farmers out there, American farmers, they need a reliable workforce and labor force that they can rely on season in and season out. And you can’t have one until you fix our broken immigration system. Seventy percent of all agricultural workers—those are the people that pick our fruit, pick our vegetables, sweat and toil, do back-breaking work in the fields across America—are undocumented. Shouldn’t they be given an opportunity? So I think if the president comes forward and says—because he’s got to pick a date, right? He can’t just say everybody who’s in the United States. I hope he picks the date of the Senate, right, so he goes back three years. With DACA, he said that the youth, the immigrant youth, had to be here by 2007, and this was 2012. He said he went back five years. He said only immigrant youth that have been here five years or longer. He’s going to have to pick a date. I don’t know what date he picks. Whatever. But even if he goes to 10 years, Juan, it’s 6.3 million people. That’s a lot of people. So, if the Republicans want to not do anything, they have to remember that Obama’s actions are going to be actions that are going to be well received throughout most of America.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s your best guess on when he’s going to make this announcement?

REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Look, here’s what he said. He said that he would make it by the end of the summer. And my hope is, notwithstanding what some Democrats have wanted him to do, and that’s to wait after the November election, I hope he keeps his word and does it by the end of the summer.

The protests that you showed earlier today were national protests. You focused on the one in Washington, D.C., but there were people in dozens of cities across America raising their voices, asking and demanding that the president take action.

Let me just say this, to Democrats specifically, and that is, we have to be a party that has values and that has principles when it comes to our immigrant community. Number one, that’s important for our party. Number two, if you just want to look at the political benefit, think one moment. It’s June 2012. President Barack Obama has a serious problem with the immigrant community. The complaints are all about his deportation. He signs DACA, right? It was executive authority that he has through Homeland Security and says, "I’m not going to deport any more youth." What happens immediately after that? The country embraced it, Juan. It embraced it to the point that at the convention, the Democratic convention, in prime time, you heard one undocumented youth after another speaking from the floor of the convention to the nation. And in November, the Democrats, in the presidential election in November of 2012, got two million more Latino votes than they did in 2008 and got an increased percentage number. So, it’s good public policy, and it certainly has been demonstrated in the past that it’s good politics.

I said—when I spoke to the president, I said, "Mr. President, when you do this and you show that government can be a tool for justice and for fairness, you do this for the immigrant community, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to broaden the ranks of those who care about justice and broaden the ranks of those who care about raising the minimum wage, those who care about better labor standards, those who care about women’s reproductive rights, those who care about our LGBT community. Let’s grow the progressive movement. Let’s take the actions that we need, that we can demonstrate that government can be a tool for good, for justice and for fairness. And if the Republicans want to respond, let them respond. Let them respond. Then what they’re going to find is that in America people want men and women of action and that take those actions boldly and swiftly."

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Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400New Family Detention Centers Hold Immigrant Women and Children Without Bond as Asylum Claims Pendhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/14/new_family_detention_centers_hold_immigrant
tag:democracynow.org,2014-08-14:en/story/c6ff73 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And finally, today, the Obama administration is fast-tracking the deportation of more than 63,000 women and children from Central America who fled to the United States to escape violence in their home countries. Most of the unaccompanied minors detained at the border since January have now been placed with family members as their cases are processed.
AMY GOODMAN : But many children who were caught with their mothers are being treated differently. They&#8217;re being sent to new family detention centers that have more than 1,200 beds and cribs. Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz visited one of them and filed this report.
RENÉE FELTZ : President Obama&#8217;s repatriation policy is in full effect in this small town of Artesia, New Mexico, home to a detention center with cribs that holds more than 600 Central American women and children.
MEGAN JORDI : Artesia is in the middle of the desert, a detention center sprung up in a place that&#8217;s hundreds of miles from any major city.
RENÉE FELTZ : Megan Jordi is legal director of the New Mexico Immigration Law Center. She and other advocates were given a tour of the trailer-like buildings, where migrants are held in a vacant area of a training camp for Border Patrol agents. I asked for a tour, but ICE said no one was available. This is how Jordi describes what she saw inside.
MEGAN JORDI : What I saw shocked me. We showed up, and there are their trailers. They&#8217;re temporary structures. We saw women and children roaming freely in one area, around what they call the &quot;pods,&quot; where they live. The pods have bedrooms with bunk beds, about eight people to one room. So I went back to the Artesia detention facility the day after the tour, and it was interesting because in that moment, the show was over. Children were not eating. Children were getting very sick. Every child I saw looked incredibly emaciated, had kind of a hollow look in their eyes. One mother had her very sick baby on her lap, and her baby was coughing so much that he began to choke. And she said he hasn&#8217;t eaten in six days. He&#8217;s lost weight. He&#8217;s lost five pounds. And for a toddler, that&#8217;s a lot of weight. The toddler looked like he was dying in front of me.
RENÉE FELTZ : After speaking with Jordi in Albuquerque, I drove four hours south to Artesia, through vast desert plains covered in scrub brush. Much of the time I was out of cellphone range. When I finally got to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, I was told I could only film across the street, where there&#8217;s no sidewalk but plenty of fire ants. The detention area was behind a high fence covered in vinyl and hard to see. It neighbors a quiet field, and at one point I thought I could hear children speaking in Spanish. Eventually, I drove to a church a few minutes away from the detention center, where children played outside and local members of a statewide group, Somos Un Pueblo, were holding their first meeting about the more than 600 detainees now in their community.
FRANCISCO PATONI : My name is Francisco Patoni. I see myself in these children, actually. My mother came to the United States first, and then she sent for us, and then we had to travel with one of those coyotes, as they call them. And eventually, we got together with my mother. And after that, I&#8217;ve been serving the public for 35 years—correctional officer, classification caseworker, counselor and teacher right now. I teach Spanish at a local high school. I&#8217;ve been serving the United States for 35 years, but it all started like these people that they have in there. My purpose here tonight is to stand up for these children, to show my face in favor of these children. Let&#8217;s treat these children right.
RENÉE FELTZ : As the meeting wore on and the sun went down, I finally got a call from a lawyer who had just finished her 12-hour day of meeting with detainees.
SHELLEY WITTEVRONGEL : My name is Shelley Wittevrongel. I&#8217;m a private immigration attorney from Boulder, Colorado. And I usually have a voice. The placement of this facility made it virtually impossible for these people, these women and children, to be represented. And that was absolutely compelling to me. And because I was able to clear two weeks off my schedule, I came down.
RENÉE FELTZ : Shelley was among the first lawyers to come to Artesia when it opened in July. Twelve days after she arrived, I found her working late into the night with a handful of other lawyers from around the country. They had set up an emergency office inside the Artesia&#8217;s Chamber of Commerce.
LAURA LICHTER : This is our war room. You know, just like the government had to start up a detention center out of nowhere, we&#8217;ve really had to start up kind of a legal services access provider out of nowhere. So, this is it. If you&#8217;re going to have a bunch of volunteer attorneys come into town, you&#8217;ve got to have someplace for them to sit, you&#8217;ve got to have wi-fi, you&#8217;ve got to have a printer, you&#8217;ve got to have a place to post notices. And we talked about the challenges that have happened during the day, and we, you know, strategize how to basically do some good old-fashioned guerrilla lawyering.
RENÉE FELTZ : Laura Lichter has been practicing immigration law for 20 years, and she&#8217;s the past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
LAURA LICHTER : This is Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. These countries are in crisis. These are people running away from countries that do not have effective governments, where it is extremely dangerous. They&#8217;re people fleeing family violence, sexual violence, predatory gangs. We&#8217;ve seen it all. These are viable claims. Everybody that is being processed through these centers, everyone that is asking the United States government to consider their claim of credible fear are people that have actually followed the law. They&#8217;ve done exactly what they&#8217;re supposed to do. They&#8217;ve essentially come to our border, knocked on the door and said, &quot;Hear my case.&quot; And the system that is in place is so stacked against them.
RENÉE FELTZ : The problem begins when the migrants are first detained at the border and asked if they&#8217;re afraid to return home. Again, Megan Jordi.
MEGAN JORDI : They were asked whether they were afraid, right when they were apprehended, right when they were faced with an adversarial process, taken to what they call la hielera , which is &quot;the icebox,&quot; which—it&#8217;s a holding facility in Texas before people are moved to detention centers. And keep in mind that these are folks who are fleeing governments, they&#8217;re fleeing people who look like those who are apprehending them in that moment, people in uniform.
RENÉE FELTZ : Several lawyers I spoke with said ICE officers were within earshot of where they met with their clients in Artesia. Others emphasized how the lack of privacy made it hard for detainees to fully describe the danger they may be trying to escape. Again, attorney Shelley Wittevrongel.
SHELLEY WITTEVRONGEL : The rules are that the children cannot be separated from their mothers. And that creates obvious complications. If a woman&#8217;s claim involves sexual violence, that&#8217;s a hard thing to talk about in front of your children. Most claims of people that I&#8217;ve talked to are people being really afraid of being killed. And to express that fear in front of your children, when they may end up having to go back to that situation, has huge consequences.
RENÉE FELTZ : One long-term study has found child migrants who have a lawyer are allowed to stay in about half of their cases. In contrast, nine out of 10 kids without an attorney are deported. Most of those held in Artesia have no lawyer to help with their asylum claims. For those who are able to connect with an attorney and win a hearing, the meeting is held over a 20-inch video screen with a judge in Arlington, Virginia. Then, if their fear is considered credible, the mother and child are kept in detention, held without bond while their cases are resolved. Again, Laura Lichter.
LAURA LICHTER : If the government insists on sticking with expedited removal, there is no such thing as a fair trial. This is no way to treat people. This is something that we should be ashamed of.
RENÉE FELTZ : For Democracy Now! , I&#8217;m Renée Feltz in Artesia, New Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN : And thanks so much to Renée, who shot and reported that story. Earlier this month, a second detention center for women and children opened in Karnes City, Texas. This one is run by the private prison company GEO Group and has another 600 beds. It&#8217;s reportedly already full. We&#8217;ll link to more information at democracynow.org. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And finally, today, the Obama administration is fast-tracking the deportation of more than 63,000 women and children from Central America who fled to the United States to escape violence in their home countries. Most of the unaccompanied minors detained at the border since January have now been placed with family members as their cases are processed.

AMYGOODMAN: But many children who were caught with their mothers are being treated differently. They’re being sent to new family detention centers that have more than 1,200 beds and cribs. Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz visited one of them and filed this report.

RENÉE FELTZ: President Obama’s repatriation policy is in full effect in this small town of Artesia, New Mexico, home to a detention center with cribs that holds more than 600 Central American women and children.

MEGANJORDI: Artesia is in the middle of the desert, a detention center sprung up in a place that’s hundreds of miles from any major city.

RENÉE FELTZ: Megan Jordi is legal director of the New Mexico Immigration Law Center. She and other advocates were given a tour of the trailer-like buildings, where migrants are held in a vacant area of a training camp for Border Patrol agents. I asked for a tour, but ICE said no one was available. This is how Jordi describes what she saw inside.

MEGANJORDI: What I saw shocked me. We showed up, and there are their trailers. They’re temporary structures. We saw women and children roaming freely in one area, around what they call the "pods," where they live. The pods have bedrooms with bunk beds, about eight people to one room. So I went back to the Artesia detention facility the day after the tour, and it was interesting because in that moment, the show was over. Children were not eating. Children were getting very sick. Every child I saw looked incredibly emaciated, had kind of a hollow look in their eyes. One mother had her very sick baby on her lap, and her baby was coughing so much that he began to choke. And she said he hasn’t eaten in six days. He’s lost weight. He’s lost five pounds. And for a toddler, that’s a lot of weight. The toddler looked like he was dying in front of me.

RENÉE FELTZ: After speaking with Jordi in Albuquerque, I drove four hours south to Artesia, through vast desert plains covered in scrub brush. Much of the time I was out of cellphone range. When I finally got to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, I was told I could only film across the street, where there’s no sidewalk but plenty of fire ants. The detention area was behind a high fence covered in vinyl and hard to see. It neighbors a quiet field, and at one point I thought I could hear children speaking in Spanish. Eventually, I drove to a church a few minutes away from the detention center, where children played outside and local members of a statewide group, Somos Un Pueblo, were holding their first meeting about the more than 600 detainees now in their community.

FRANCISCOPATONI: My name is Francisco Patoni. I see myself in these children, actually. My mother came to the United States first, and then she sent for us, and then we had to travel with one of those coyotes, as they call them. And eventually, we got together with my mother. And after that, I’ve been serving the public for 35 years—correctional officer, classification caseworker, counselor and teacher right now. I teach Spanish at a local high school. I’ve been serving the United States for 35 years, but it all started like these people that they have in there. My purpose here tonight is to stand up for these children, to show my face in favor of these children. Let’s treat these children right.

RENÉE FELTZ: As the meeting wore on and the sun went down, I finally got a call from a lawyer who had just finished her 12-hour day of meeting with detainees.

SHELLEYWITTEVRONGEL: My name is Shelley Wittevrongel. I’m a private immigration attorney from Boulder, Colorado. And I usually have a voice. The placement of this facility made it virtually impossible for these people, these women and children, to be represented. And that was absolutely compelling to me. And because I was able to clear two weeks off my schedule, I came down.

RENÉE FELTZ: Shelley was among the first lawyers to come to Artesia when it opened in July. Twelve days after she arrived, I found her working late into the night with a handful of other lawyers from around the country. They had set up an emergency office inside the Artesia’s Chamber of Commerce.

LAURALICHTER: This is our war room. You know, just like the government had to start up a detention center out of nowhere, we’ve really had to start up kind of a legal services access provider out of nowhere. So, this is it. If you’re going to have a bunch of volunteer attorneys come into town, you’ve got to have someplace for them to sit, you’ve got to have wi-fi, you’ve got to have a printer, you’ve got to have a place to post notices. And we talked about the challenges that have happened during the day, and we, you know, strategize how to basically do some good old-fashioned guerrilla lawyering.

RENÉE FELTZ: Laura Lichter has been practicing immigration law for 20 years, and she’s the past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

LAURALICHTER: This is Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. These countries are in crisis. These are people running away from countries that do not have effective governments, where it is extremely dangerous. They’re people fleeing family violence, sexual violence, predatory gangs. We’ve seen it all. These are viable claims. Everybody that is being processed through these centers, everyone that is asking the United States government to consider their claim of credible fear are people that have actually followed the law. They’ve done exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’ve essentially come to our border, knocked on the door and said, "Hear my case." And the system that is in place is so stacked against them.

RENÉE FELTZ: The problem begins when the migrants are first detained at the border and asked if they’re afraid to return home. Again, Megan Jordi.

MEGANJORDI: They were asked whether they were afraid, right when they were apprehended, right when they were faced with an adversarial process, taken to what they call la hielera, which is "the icebox," which—it’s a holding facility in Texas before people are moved to detention centers. And keep in mind that these are folks who are fleeing governments, they’re fleeing people who look like those who are apprehending them in that moment, people in uniform.

RENÉE FELTZ: Several lawyers I spoke with said ICE officers were within earshot of where they met with their clients in Artesia. Others emphasized how the lack of privacy made it hard for detainees to fully describe the danger they may be trying to escape. Again, attorney Shelley Wittevrongel.

SHELLEYWITTEVRONGEL: The rules are that the children cannot be separated from their mothers. And that creates obvious complications. If a woman’s claim involves sexual violence, that’s a hard thing to talk about in front of your children. Most claims of people that I’ve talked to are people being really afraid of being killed. And to express that fear in front of your children, when they may end up having to go back to that situation, has huge consequences.

RENÉE FELTZ: One long-term study has found child migrants who have a lawyer are allowed to stay in about half of their cases. In contrast, nine out of 10 kids without an attorney are deported. Most of those held in Artesia have no lawyer to help with their asylum claims. For those who are able to connect with an attorney and win a hearing, the meeting is held over a 20-inch video screen with a judge in Arlington, Virginia. Then, if their fear is considered credible, the mother and child are kept in detention, held without bond while their cases are resolved. Again, Laura Lichter.

LAURALICHTER: If the government insists on sticking with expedited removal, there is no such thing as a fair trial. This is no way to treat people. This is something that we should be ashamed of.

AMYGOODMAN: And thanks so much to Renée, who shot and reported that story. Earlier this month, a second detention center for women and children opened in Karnes City, Texas. This one is run by the private prison company GEO Group and has another 600 beds. It’s reportedly already full. We’ll link to more information at democracynow.org.

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Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0400Two Detention Centers for Migrant Women And Children Open On 5th Anniv. of End to Family Detentionhttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/8/8/two_detention_centers_for_migrant_women
tag:democracynow.org,2014-08-08:blog/4a5b94 Five years ago immigration advocates praised the Obama administration for closing down the only large-scale detention center for immigrant women and children. Now, in response to the surge of Central American migrants caught at the border after seeking asylum, it has quietly opened two new family detention facilities that have more than 1,200 beds, and cribs.
While unaccompanied migrant children have largely been placed with family members already in the country, those who were stopped at the border with their mothers are being treated differently.
Democracy Now! has documented how more than 650 women and children, some as young as 18 months old, have been sent to an isolated detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. Watch the video above to see Democracy Now! producer Renee Feltz report on the poor conditions and lack of due process there, and the lawyers mobilizing to assist them. This week the first detainee in Artesia was granted bond as her asylum claim is processed, but it was set at $25,000, an unusually high sum since studies show refugees almost always show up to their asylum hearings.
In August, hundreds more kids and their mothers began to be transferred to a detention center in Karnes City, Texas, which is run by the private prison company, Geo Group, and has another 600 beds which used to hold male prisoners.
All of this comes as immigration advocates had been planning to mark the fifth anniversary of the end of family detention. It was August 2009 when Obama closed down the only other large detention center that held women and children&ndash;the &quot;T. Don Hutto facility in Texas, run by Corrections Corporation of America, where the American Civil Liberties Union had to sue to improve conditions, saying toddlers in prison uniforms spent most of the day locked in their cells. Since then, the only other place that held toddlers or babies still nursing had been the Berks Family Residential Service in Leesport, Pennsylvania, which has 85 beds.
Obama&#8217;s repatriation policy is reflected in his $3.7 billion emergency supplemental request, which includes $879 million for 6,350 more beds for detained families, at about $120/day per bed. It would also open 23,000 daily slots for alternatives to detention. Geo Group stands to profit from this as well, since its subsidiary Bi Incorporated has the main contract to provide electronic monitoring bracelets that track immigrants with cases still being processed.
Meanwhile a New York based company has proposed building a 3,500 bed warehouse for unaccompanied migrant children in Clint, Texas. It would be called the &quot;Abraham Lincoln Transitional Lodge,&quot; according to the company&#8217;s application. The town itself has 926 residents according to the 2010 census. The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing the proposal.
Five years ago immigration advocates praised the Obama administration for closing down the only large-scale detention center for immigrant women and children. Now, in response to the surge of Central American migrants caught at the border after seeking asylum, it has quietly opened two new family detention facilities that have more than 1,200 beds, and cribs.

While unaccompanied migrant children have largely been placed with family members already in the country, those who were stopped at the border with their mothers are being treated differently.

Democracy Now! has documented how more than 650 women and children, some as young as 18 months old, have been sent to an isolated detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. Watch the video above to see Democracy Now! producer Renee Feltz report on the poor conditions and lack of due process there, and the lawyers mobilizing to assist them. This week the first detainee in Artesia was granted bond as her asylum claim is processed, but it was set at $25,000, an unusually high sum since studies show refugees almost always show up to their asylum hearings.

In August, hundreds more kids and their mothers began to be transferred to a detention center in Karnes City, Texas, which is run by the private prison company, Geo Group, and has another 600 beds which used to hold male prisoners.

All of this comes as immigration advocates had been planning to mark the fifth anniversary of the end of family detention. It was August 2009 when Obama closed down the only other large detention center that held women and children–the "T. Don Hutto facility in Texas, run by Corrections Corporation of America, where the American Civil Liberties Union had to sue to improve conditions, saying toddlers in prison uniforms spent most of the day locked in their cells. Since then, the only other place that held toddlers or babies still nursing had been the Berks Family Residential Service in Leesport, Pennsylvania, which has 85 beds.

Obama’s repatriation policy is reflected in his $3.7 billion emergency supplemental request, which includes $879 million for 6,350 more beds for detained families, at about $120/day per bed. It would also open 23,000 daily slots for alternatives to detention. Geo Group stands to profit from this as well, since its subsidiary Bi Incorporated has the main contract to provide electronic monitoring bracelets that track immigrants with cases still being processed.

Meanwhile a New York based company has proposed building a 3,500 bed warehouse for unaccompanied migrant children in Clint, Texas. It would be called the "Abraham Lincoln Transitional Lodge," according to the company’s application. The town itself has 926 residents according to the 2010 census. The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing the proposal.

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Fri, 08 Aug 2014 16:56:00 -0400Two Detention Centers for Migrant Women And Children Open On 5th Anniv. of End to Family Detention Five years ago immigration advocates praised the Obama administration for closing down the only large-scale detention center for immigrant women and children. Now, in response to the surge of Central American migrants caught at the border after seeking asylum, it has quietly opened two new family detention facilities that have more than 1,200 beds, and cribs.
While unaccompanied migrant children have largely been placed with family members already in the country, those who were stopped at the border with their mothers are being treated differently.
Democracy Now! has documented how more than 650 women and children, some as young as 18 months old, have been sent to an isolated detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. Watch the video above to see Democracy Now! producer Renee Feltz report on the poor conditions and lack of due process there, and the lawyers mobilizing to assist them. This week the first detainee in Artesia was granted bond as her asylum claim is processed, but it was set at $25,000, an unusually high sum since studies show refugees almost always show up to their asylum hearings.
In August, hundreds more kids and their mothers began to be transferred to a detention center in Karnes City, Texas, which is run by the private prison company, Geo Group, and has another 600 beds which used to hold male prisoners.
All of this comes as immigration advocates had been planning to mark the fifth anniversary of the end of family detention. It was August 2009 when Obama closed down the only other large detention center that held women and children&ndash;the &quot;T. Don Hutto facility in Texas, run by Corrections Corporation of America, where the American Civil Liberties Union had to sue to improve conditions, saying toddlers in prison uniforms spent most of the day locked in their cells. Since then, the only other place that held toddlers or babies still nursing had been the Berks Family Residential Service in Leesport, Pennsylvania, which has 85 beds.
Obama&#8217;s repatriation policy is reflected in his $3.7 billion emergency supplemental request, which includes $879 million for 6,350 more beds for detained families, at about $120/day per bed. It would also open 23,000 daily slots for alternatives to detention. Geo Group stands to profit from this as well, since its subsidiary Bi Incorporated has the main contract to provide electronic monitoring bracelets that track immigrants with cases still being processed.
Meanwhile a New York based company has proposed building a 3,500 bed warehouse for unaccompanied migrant children in Clint, Texas. It would be called the &quot;Abraham Lincoln Transitional Lodge,&quot; according to the company&#8217;s application. The town itself has 926 residents according to the 2010 census. The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing the proposal. nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!NewsU.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisishttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants
tag:democracynow.org,2014-07-17:en/story/85a820 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This week saw the first planeload of children deported to Honduras since President Obama vowed to speed up the removal of more than 57,000 youths who&#8217;ve fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees included 21 children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, along with 17 female family members.
Among them was Victoria Cordova, who came to the United States with her nine-year-old daughter. They were captured at the U.S.-Mexico border after a 25-day journey and are now back in San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world. Last month, children in Honduras were murdered at a rate of more than one per day. Cordova described her ordeal to reporters.
VICTORIA CORDOVA : [translated] I don&#8217;t have any work. It&#8217;s been four months without work. This is a part of what motivated me to go—the poverty, the situation here, this insecurity we live through. We see children nearby who are very young, 12 and 13 years old, and they drug themselves. It&#8217;s terrible to live like this. Here we live a life where you can&#8217;t even call the police, because they are controlled by the gangs.
When we crossed the river and they trapped us, we didn&#8217;t think. We had some hope. And then, when we arrived in McAllen, we were on the floor. There was dust. There were a lot of people there, and I was there for various hours. They call it an ice box, because it&#8217;s very cold there. We were there for two days. They took us to El Paso, Texas, on a plane, and there in El Paso, Texas, we spent two days there sleeping on the ground, cold.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the experience of Cordova and others should demonstrate to Central Americans that, quote, &quot;they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms.&quot;
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Honduran officials called for an increase in U.S. aid to Central America. Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero called for a, quote, &quot;mini-Marshall Plan,&quot; similar to the U.S. anti-drug programs in Colombia and Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN : In fact, U.S. funding and foreign policy has long shaped the lives of Central Americans. June 28th marked the fifth anniversary of the military coup that deposed the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, which the U.S did not oppose. Our next guest argues it was the coup, more than drug trafficking and gangs, that opened the doors to the violence in Honduras and unleashed an ongoing wave of state-sponsored repression.
We&#8217;re joined right now by Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. She recently authored a piece titled &quot;Who&#8217;s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?&quot; And in February, her article , &quot;The Thugocracy Next Door,&quot; appeared in Politico magazine.
Dana Frank, welcome to Democracy Now!
DANA FRANK : Thanks a lot.
AMY GOODMAN : Thank you for joining us from the Stanford University studios. Explain what the background is for so many—and so many children—to be fleeing the violence in Honduras.
DANA FRANK : Yeah, I think, you know, we keep hearing the fact that people are fleeing gangs and violence, but there hasn&#8217;t been an analysis or discussion of why is there so much gang activity and violence in Honduras. And the answer is this tremendous criminality that the 2009 military coup opened the door to when it overthrew the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. The coup, of course, itself was a criminal act, and it really opened the door for this spectacular corruption of the police and up-and-down, top-to-bottom of the government. And that, in turn, means it&#8217;s possible to kill anybody you want, practically, and nothing will happen to you. It&#8217;s widely documented that the police are overwhelmingly corrupt. Even a government official charged with cleaning up the police admitted last fall that 70 percent of the Honduran police are beyond saving. And you heard the woman, Ms. Cordova, say that the police themselves are tied in with organized crime and drug traffickers. So, when we talk about this violence, it&#8217;s really important to understand there&#8217;s almost no functioning criminal justice system and no political will at the top to do anything about this.
The president, the new president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who came into power in January, himself was a major backer of the criminal coup when he was the president—was head of a key committee in the Honduran Congress at the time, and a year and a half ago, as president of the Honduran Congress, illegally overthrew part of the Supreme Court, and he illegally was part of naming a new attorney general loyal to him last summer, named to an illegal five-year term. And he&#8217;s built his campaign not around cleaning up the police, but a new military police that is expanding this militarization of Honduran society, and that military police itself is committing serious human rights abuses, including, recently in May, beating up and jailing the most prominent advocate for children in Honduras.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dana Frank, I remember being in San Pedro Sula back in the early 1990s. I mean, not only was the level of corruption incredibly high among the police forces, but there were—the military was out in the streets constantly patrolling. It&#8217;s also one of the poorest countries in all of the Americas. You&#8217;ve also referred to the impact of the CAFTA deal on Honduras and on the poverty of the country.
DANA FRANK : Oh, yeah, certainly, it&#8217;s not like there was ever a golden age in Honduras. But, you know, as Senator Tim Kaine said in a hearing for the new ambassador of Honduras, that Hondurans are saying that the level of militarization, as well—he said the level of military repression and terror there is worse than it was in the early 1980s at the height of the U.S.-funded Contra war in Nicaragua that Honduras was the base for. So we need to talk about, relatively, this is even more terrifying than then, which is really saying a lot.
Yeah, when we talk about the fleeing gangs and violence, it&#8217;s also this tremendous poverty. And poverty doesn&#8217;t just happen. It, itself, is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government and the U.S. government, including privatizations, mass layoffs of government workers, and a new—in Honduras, a new law, that&#8217;s now made permanent, that breaks up full-time jobs and makes them part-time and ineligible for unionization, living wage and the national health service. And a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which itself is funding the corrupt Honduran police. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is the other piece of this. Like NAFTA did for the U.S. and Mexico, it opens the door to this open competition between small producers in agriculture in Honduras, small manufacturers, and jobs are disappearing as a result of that.
So, with this poverty that we&#8217;re seeing that people are fleeing, it&#8217;s not like people are like, &quot;Let&#8217;s go have the American dream.&quot; There are almost no jobs for young people. Their parents know it. And we&#8217;re talking about starving to death—that&#8217;s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence. And it&#8217;s a very, very tragic situation here. But it&#8217;s not like it tragically just happened. It&#8217;s a direct result of very conscious policies by the U.S. and Honduran governments.
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Frank, I wanted to go to this issue of U.S. responsibility and turn to former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya , who was ousted five years ago. We got a chance to sit down with him in 2011 at his home in Tegucigalpa. I had just flown in with him. This was after the coup when a new president was chosen. And his family flew back from Nicaragua to Honduras. It was the first time that he was at his home for several years.
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] The U.S. State Department has always denied, and they continue to deny, any ties with the coup d&#8217;état. Nevertheless, all of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the actions that were taken by the de facto regime, or the golpista regime, which are those who carried out the coup, and it is to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and the financial policies of the United States in Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Professor Dana Frank, he strongly felt that the U.S. was involved with the coup. What evidence is there for that?
DANA FRANK : Well, the biggest evidence we have is that his plane stopped at the air force base at Palmerola, known as Soto Cano Air Force Base now, which is a joint U.S. and Honduran base. That plane could not have stopped there without U.S. permission. We don&#8217;t have the big smoking guns. We certainly have the behavior of the U.S. State Department and the White House after the coup, which was to legitimate the coup government as an equal partner to Zelaya—in fact, as a superior partner. They never denounced the spectacular repression after the coup. And they treated Zelaya like a bad child for trying to return to his own country. They recognized—they announced that they would recognize the outcome of the illegitimate November elections after that, even before the votes were counted. And it was clearly they wanted the whole situation to go away.
I mean, they clearly—Zelaya was, in many ways, the weakest domino of all the center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years. And it was a message to all those other governments that we will back coups, and we will overthrow you, as well. The U.S. then supported President Lobo, the outcome of that November 2009 election, and made up this fiction that it was a government of national reconciliation, and, ever since, has been turning a blind eye, for the most part, to the spectacular human rights abuses, including killings by state security forces and really spectacular lack of political will to deal with corruption at the very top of the government. And the U.S. keeps acting like this is just a hunky-dory government that we should be working with as a partner.
You know, I found it tremendously chilling to be reading newspaper reports and media reports of that planeload of children that came back to Honduras and the U.S. working with the Honduran government, welcoming those children with open arms, when the government itself is countenancing this problem. The government itself, you know, beat—has countenanced the beating up of the leading independent children&#8217;s activist in the country. The government itself doesn&#8217;t have the political will to clean up the police. So, what does it mean that we&#8217;re working with this partner to help these Honduran children?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We&#8217;re also joined by Jennifer Harbury, a human rights activist and lawyer based in Weslaco, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. She&#8217;s the author of Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala and has spent decades pressing for declassified information on her husband&#8217;s case.
Welcome, Jennifer Harbury.
JENNIFER HARBURY : Thank you very much. I&#8217;m glad to be with you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk to us about the—as we&#8217;ve been discussing Honduras, many of the children are also coming from Guatemala. And again, some of that history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala, especially in recent years.
JENNIFER HARBURY : Yes. We&#8217;ve been horrified by the thought of sending any of these children back, since, by international and domestic law, they qualify as refugees, almost all of them.
I can certainly talk about the Guatemalan counterpart to what Dana was just discussing. We talk sometimes about maybe the solution is to send more funding—as she was saying, a new Marshall Plan—to Central American countries. But that&#8217;s in fact going to pour gasoline on the fire, especially in Guatemala, where a number of former and current top officials in the military are in fact the drug lords. Some of them have left the military; some are still in. They got involved in the drug trade while the wars were going on and they had airstrips that were valuable to the Colombian drug lords. They became very wealthy that way and now have what are called parallel structures. And they organize, arm and train the gangs themselves to do their dirty work.
For example, the Zeta cartel that terrorize the border strip where I live now, which is almost down to Brownsville—I&#8217;m 10 miles from the Rio Grande—the Zetas are one of the most feared cartels anywhere, totally brutal. They were armed, trained and organized by the Guatemalan military special forces, called the Kaibiles, who, of course, in turn, were armed, trained, organized, etc., by the United States intelligence networks, and trained many of them at the School of the Americas. Another example is Julio Roberto Alpirez, a colonel, one of many high-level military officials, who is on the DEA corrupt officer list, but because he also worked as a paid CIA informant, no one has ever been able to go after him. So, much like Honduras, we have one of the highest murder rates in the world. The femicide rate is something like 10 times higher than that in Juárez.
As these refugees pour into the United States, we&#8217;re taking all kinds of measures to justify sending them back and claiming they&#8217;re not refugees. But the way we&#8217;re doing that is to expedite or rush them through proceedings so quickly that they can&#8217;t really tell their stories. And, of course, they have no legal advice. And basically turns on whether or not a 10-year-old child, when confronted with a Border Patrol agent, or young mother confronted with a Border Patrol agent, is able and willing to say, &quot;I&#8217;m asking for political asylum. I&#8217;m in danger of persecution or abuse at the hands of the drug lords and the gangs.&quot; And all of those people know, if they ever say those words, they&#8217;re going to be dead when they go back home. It&#8217;s the death penalty to squeal, basically, on the gangs and the drug lords in any way. So, without a lawyer, within days, they&#8217;re going to be headed home under expedited proceedings.
And this is a violation of international law and also U.S. domestic law. If they qualify for asylum or treatment under the Convention Against Torture, if they&#8217;re in danger of being harmed in this way by people who either are government officials or who are acting without the local governments being able or &quot;willing,&quot; quote-unquote, to protect the population, then these people are refugees. They cannot be sent back. And sweeping them under the rug and getting them out of the country so fast that they can&#8217;t tell their stories or get any legal advice is a double violation of humanitarian law, and it&#8217;s something we&#8217;re going to be answering for for a long time. We&#8217;re certainly not proud of having turned back the boatload of Jews to Nazi Germany, but at least we didn&#8217;t sail out on the high seas, board the ships and throw people overboard. These are children. These are refugees. We have to let them in.
There are many kinds of programs that we can put into action that would deal with the situation well, in the same way we&#8217;ve done before. We can do deferred action, deferred enforcement, temporary protected status. We&#8217;ve done those things for Honduras and Haiti. It would let people stay for a year or two and then have the danger in their homelands reconsidered. Meanwhile, they can work and support themselves. It would relieve the backup in the court. There&#8217;s many alternatives. We&#8217;re choosing to pretend that they&#8217;re not refugees, and send them home in violation of the law.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to have to leave it there, but we thank you both very much for being with us. We&#8217;ll link to both of your work.
Jennifer Harbury, human rights activist and lawyer, we&#8217;re speaking to her right near the border in Weslaco, Texas, near the Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. He was tortured. He was murdered. And those involved with his killing were trained by the United States, and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency.
Dana Frank, we thank you for being with us from Stanford University&#8217;s studios, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, expert on U.S. policy in Honduras. We&#8217;ll link to your piece , &quot;Who&#8217;s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?&quot; as well as the other one , &quot;The Thugocracy Next Door,&quot; which appeared in Politico magazine.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This week saw the first planeload of children deported to Honduras since President Obama vowed to speed up the removal of more than 57,000 youths who’ve fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees included 21 children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, along with 17 female family members.

Among them was Victoria Cordova, who came to the United States with her nine-year-old daughter. They were captured at the U.S.-Mexico border after a 25-day journey and are now back in San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world. Last month, children in Honduras were murdered at a rate of more than one per day. Cordova described her ordeal to reporters.

VICTORIACORDOVA: [translated] I don’t have any work. It’s been four months without work. This is a part of what motivated me to go—the poverty, the situation here, this insecurity we live through. We see children nearby who are very young, 12 and 13 years old, and they drug themselves. It’s terrible to live like this. Here we live a life where you can’t even call the police, because they are controlled by the gangs.

When we crossed the river and they trapped us, we didn’t think. We had some hope. And then, when we arrived in McAllen, we were on the floor. There was dust. There were a lot of people there, and I was there for various hours. They call it an ice box, because it’s very cold there. We were there for two days. They took us to El Paso, Texas, on a plane, and there in El Paso, Texas, we spent two days there sleeping on the ground, cold.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the experience of Cordova and others should demonstrate to Central Americans that, quote, "they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms."

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Honduran officials called for an increase in U.S. aid to Central America. Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero called for a, quote, "mini-Marshall Plan," similar to the U.S. anti-drug programs in Colombia and Mexico.

AMYGOODMAN: In fact, U.S. funding and foreign policy has long shaped the lives of Central Americans. June 28th marked the fifth anniversary of the military coup that deposed the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, which the U.S did not oppose. Our next guest argues it was the coup, more than drug trafficking and gangs, that opened the doors to the violence in Honduras and unleashed an ongoing wave of state-sponsored repression.

We’re joined right now by Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. She recently authored a piece titled "Who’s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?" And in February, her article, "The Thugocracy Next Door," appeared in Politico magazine.

Dana Frank, welcome to Democracy Now!

DANAFRANK: Thanks a lot.

AMYGOODMAN: Thank you for joining us from the Stanford University studios. Explain what the background is for so many—and so many children—to be fleeing the violence in Honduras.

DANAFRANK: Yeah, I think, you know, we keep hearing the fact that people are fleeing gangs and violence, but there hasn’t been an analysis or discussion of why is there so much gang activity and violence in Honduras. And the answer is this tremendous criminality that the 2009 military coup opened the door to when it overthrew the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. The coup, of course, itself was a criminal act, and it really opened the door for this spectacular corruption of the police and up-and-down, top-to-bottom of the government. And that, in turn, means it’s possible to kill anybody you want, practically, and nothing will happen to you. It’s widely documented that the police are overwhelmingly corrupt. Even a government official charged with cleaning up the police admitted last fall that 70 percent of the Honduran police are beyond saving. And you heard the woman, Ms. Cordova, say that the police themselves are tied in with organized crime and drug traffickers. So, when we talk about this violence, it’s really important to understand there’s almost no functioning criminal justice system and no political will at the top to do anything about this.

The president, the new president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who came into power in January, himself was a major backer of the criminal coup when he was the president—was head of a key committee in the Honduran Congress at the time, and a year and a half ago, as president of the Honduran Congress, illegally overthrew part of the Supreme Court, and he illegally was part of naming a new attorney general loyal to him last summer, named to an illegal five-year term. And he’s built his campaign not around cleaning up the police, but a new military police that is expanding this militarization of Honduran society, and that military police itself is committing serious human rights abuses, including, recently in May, beating up and jailing the most prominent advocate for children in Honduras.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dana Frank, I remember being in San Pedro Sula back in the early 1990s. I mean, not only was the level of corruption incredibly high among the police forces, but there were—the military was out in the streets constantly patrolling. It’s also one of the poorest countries in all of the Americas. You’ve also referred to the impact of the CAFTA deal on Honduras and on the poverty of the country.

DANAFRANK: Oh, yeah, certainly, it’s not like there was ever a golden age in Honduras. But, you know, as Senator Tim Kaine said in a hearing for the new ambassador of Honduras, that Hondurans are saying that the level of militarization, as well—he said the level of military repression and terror there is worse than it was in the early 1980s at the height of the U.S.-funded Contra war in Nicaragua that Honduras was the base for. So we need to talk about, relatively, this is even more terrifying than then, which is really saying a lot.

Yeah, when we talk about the fleeing gangs and violence, it’s also this tremendous poverty. And poverty doesn’t just happen. It, itself, is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government and the U.S. government, including privatizations, mass layoffs of government workers, and a new—in Honduras, a new law, that’s now made permanent, that breaks up full-time jobs and makes them part-time and ineligible for unionization, living wage and the national health service. And a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which itself is funding the corrupt Honduran police. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is the other piece of this. Like NAFTA did for the U.S. and Mexico, it opens the door to this open competition between small producers in agriculture in Honduras, small manufacturers, and jobs are disappearing as a result of that.

So, with this poverty that we’re seeing that people are fleeing, it’s not like people are like, "Let’s go have the American dream." There are almost no jobs for young people. Their parents know it. And we’re talking about starving to death—that’s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence. And it’s a very, very tragic situation here. But it’s not like it tragically just happened. It’s a direct result of very conscious policies by the U.S. and Honduran governments.

AMYGOODMAN: Professor Frank, I wanted to go to this issue of U.S. responsibility and turn to former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted five years ago. We got a chance to sit down with him in 2011 at his home in Tegucigalpa. I had just flown in with him. This was after the coup when a new president was chosen. And his family flew back from Nicaragua to Honduras. It was the first time that he was at his home for several years.

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] The U.S. State Department has always denied, and they continue to deny, any ties with the coup d’état. Nevertheless, all of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the actions that were taken by the de facto regime, or the golpista regime, which are those who carried out the coup, and it is to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and the financial policies of the United States in Honduras.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Professor Dana Frank, he strongly felt that the U.S. was involved with the coup. What evidence is there for that?

DANAFRANK: Well, the biggest evidence we have is that his plane stopped at the air force base at Palmerola, known as Soto Cano Air Force Base now, which is a joint U.S. and Honduran base. That plane could not have stopped there without U.S. permission. We don’t have the big smoking guns. We certainly have the behavior of the U.S. State Department and the White House after the coup, which was to legitimate the coup government as an equal partner to Zelaya—in fact, as a superior partner. They never denounced the spectacular repression after the coup. And they treated Zelaya like a bad child for trying to return to his own country. They recognized—they announced that they would recognize the outcome of the illegitimate November elections after that, even before the votes were counted. And it was clearly they wanted the whole situation to go away.

I mean, they clearly—Zelaya was, in many ways, the weakest domino of all the center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years. And it was a message to all those other governments that we will back coups, and we will overthrow you, as well. The U.S. then supported President Lobo, the outcome of that November 2009 election, and made up this fiction that it was a government of national reconciliation, and, ever since, has been turning a blind eye, for the most part, to the spectacular human rights abuses, including killings by state security forces and really spectacular lack of political will to deal with corruption at the very top of the government. And the U.S. keeps acting like this is just a hunky-dory government that we should be working with as a partner.

You know, I found it tremendously chilling to be reading newspaper reports and media reports of that planeload of children that came back to Honduras and the U.S. working with the Honduran government, welcoming those children with open arms, when the government itself is countenancing this problem. The government itself, you know, beat—has countenanced the beating up of the leading independent children’s activist in the country. The government itself doesn’t have the political will to clean up the police. So, what does it mean that we’re working with this partner to help these Honduran children?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Jennifer Harbury, a human rights activist and lawyer based in Weslaco, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. She’s the author of Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala and has spent decades pressing for declassified information on her husband’s case.

Welcome, Jennifer Harbury.

JENNIFERHARBURY: Thank you very much. I’m glad to be with you.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk to us about the—as we’ve been discussing Honduras, many of the children are also coming from Guatemala. And again, some of that history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala, especially in recent years.

JENNIFERHARBURY: Yes. We’ve been horrified by the thought of sending any of these children back, since, by international and domestic law, they qualify as refugees, almost all of them.

I can certainly talk about the Guatemalan counterpart to what Dana was just discussing. We talk sometimes about maybe the solution is to send more funding—as she was saying, a new Marshall Plan—to Central American countries. But that’s in fact going to pour gasoline on the fire, especially in Guatemala, where a number of former and current top officials in the military are in fact the drug lords. Some of them have left the military; some are still in. They got involved in the drug trade while the wars were going on and they had airstrips that were valuable to the Colombian drug lords. They became very wealthy that way and now have what are called parallel structures. And they organize, arm and train the gangs themselves to do their dirty work.

For example, the Zeta cartel that terrorize the border strip where I live now, which is almost down to Brownsville—I’m 10 miles from the Rio Grande—the Zetas are one of the most feared cartels anywhere, totally brutal. They were armed, trained and organized by the Guatemalan military special forces, called the Kaibiles, who, of course, in turn, were armed, trained, organized, etc., by the United States intelligence networks, and trained many of them at the School of the Americas. Another example is Julio Roberto Alpirez, a colonel, one of many high-level military officials, who is on the DEA corrupt officer list, but because he also worked as a paid CIA informant, no one has ever been able to go after him. So, much like Honduras, we have one of the highest murder rates in the world. The femicide rate is something like 10 times higher than that in Juárez.

As these refugees pour into the United States, we’re taking all kinds of measures to justify sending them back and claiming they’re not refugees. But the way we’re doing that is to expedite or rush them through proceedings so quickly that they can’t really tell their stories. And, of course, they have no legal advice. And basically turns on whether or not a 10-year-old child, when confronted with a Border Patrol agent, or young mother confronted with a Border Patrol agent, is able and willing to say, "I’m asking for political asylum. I’m in danger of persecution or abuse at the hands of the drug lords and the gangs." And all of those people know, if they ever say those words, they’re going to be dead when they go back home. It’s the death penalty to squeal, basically, on the gangs and the drug lords in any way. So, without a lawyer, within days, they’re going to be headed home under expedited proceedings.

And this is a violation of international law and also U.S. domestic law. If they qualify for asylum or treatment under the Convention Against Torture, if they’re in danger of being harmed in this way by people who either are government officials or who are acting without the local governments being able or "willing," quote-unquote, to protect the population, then these people are refugees. They cannot be sent back. And sweeping them under the rug and getting them out of the country so fast that they can’t tell their stories or get any legal advice is a double violation of humanitarian law, and it’s something we’re going to be answering for for a long time. We’re certainly not proud of having turned back the boatload of Jews to Nazi Germany, but at least we didn’t sail out on the high seas, board the ships and throw people overboard. These are children. These are refugees. We have to let them in.

There are many kinds of programs that we can put into action that would deal with the situation well, in the same way we’ve done before. We can do deferred action, deferred enforcement, temporary protected status. We’ve done those things for Honduras and Haiti. It would let people stay for a year or two and then have the danger in their homelands reconsidered. Meanwhile, they can work and support themselves. It would relieve the backup in the court. There’s many alternatives. We’re choosing to pretend that they’re not refugees, and send them home in violation of the law.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we thank you both very much for being with us. We’ll link to both of your work.

Jennifer Harbury, human rights activist and lawyer, we’re speaking to her right near the border in Weslaco, Texas, near the Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. He was tortured. He was murdered. And those involved with his killing were trained by the United States, and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dana Frank, we thank you for being with us from Stanford University’s studios, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, expert on U.S. policy in Honduras. We’ll link to your piece, "Who’s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?" as well as the other one, "The Thugocracy Next Door," which appeared in Politico magazine.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us.